The Confirmation Hearings Begin

"Send in the clowns, don't bother, they're here."

Today, Senate committees will start their hearings on the Convicted Felon’s nominees. Article 2 of the Constitution gives the Senate the obligation to “advice and consent” in the confirmation of certain of a President’s nominees. Annotation here. Since 1868, the Senate has required nominees to pass muster with a committee prior to their nominations coming to the full floor. Some history here.

Normally, nominees are confirmed. They are VERY rarely rejected, although nominees are more commonly withdrawn if there is a likelihood of them going down in flames, like pedophile Matt Gaetz. The last nominee to be rejected was John Tower in 1989¹. And so, as much as this angers, saddens, infuriates and makes you want to cry, most of the Convicted Felon’s nominees will be confirmed.

Below is the list of this week’s initial hearings, along with the name of the committee undertaking each initial evaluation, along with a link to each committee².

Tonight, there’s an Action Call from Indivisible National, and several other groups, and they will lay out their plans. If I had to guess, they’ll be asking people to contact their Senators who are on the committees to block the nominations. Remember, you can contact the Chair and Ranking Member directly from each of the committee websites, but Senators only care about what THEIR constituents have to say, so you can look at the list of members for each committee to see if either of your Senators is on the list.

When I look at the list, I see most of the nominees gliding through the process³, and I personally wouldn’t waste my time trying to stop them. Senators are strategic, and mostly likely only 3 - 5 nominees will face a lot of problems. Don’t get me wrong, no one on the nomination list is someone I would personally want to see in a position of power, but the reality is that either at least most of these nominees get confirmed, or there will be recess appointments.

The person on the initial list who will suck the most oxygen this week is Pete Hegseth, who is an alcoholic sexual abuser with no salient abilities to run a huge organization. Not to mention that he wants to bring the confederacy back to military bases. John Ratcliffe is interesting as his name was withdrawn from his last nomination in 2019 because he wasn’t going to get confirmed, but the voting Senators are different now.

Hegseth will go in front of the Armed Services Committee, which has 27 members:14 Rethuglicans and 13 Democrats. The vote to watch will be Joni Ernst. Combined in the National Guard and the Reserves, she served 23 years, including a year as a commander in Kuwait during the Iraq War. She has said that she was sexually harassed while in the military. Source. She will be the deciding vote on whether or not Pete makes it out of committee, although she may pass him through and potentially vote against his confirmation during the full Senate vote. No way of telling, the political pressure on her has been huge. But if you live in Iowa, you should contact her.

In addition to Pete, the other nominees with potential problems include Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, Jr.

The question for you and me, and all the other humans in the United States who believe the FBI should be about tracking and prosecuting actual criminals, and not criminalizing “enemies of the Convicted Felon”, who believe that our nation’s security should never be left in the hands of someone who colludes with our enemies, and who believes that science is important, vaccines are good, and people with dead worms in their brains who did horrible things to his first wife should just stay the hell out of public life is: CAN WE DO ANYTHING PRODUCTIVE?

While others will disagree with me, I think that the best of course of action is to pick the worst candidates (in my mind, Hegseth, Patel, Gabbard and RFK, Jr.) and contact your Senator if one is on the committee, and then both Senators if the nomination comes to the floor, specifying why you are opposed to the confirmation. Then ignore all the other nominees⁴.

We’re not dogs (and don’t get me wrong I love dogs) - every political thing can’t be a squirrel. Again, we’re not dogs hard wired to go after every squirrel. Going after nominees who will for certain be confirmed is, in my opinion, a waste of time.

Every president picks his nominees, and he’s entitled to that. We should stand in opposition to the really dangerous ones, but we need to accept that, eventually, he will fill the slots.

It will be interesting to see how the Democrats vote. Will they stand en masse in opposition as they should? Will some defect in hopes of, oh hell, I have no idea, but each one of the defectors should start wearing an “I love Neville Chamberlain” tee shirt.

If you live in a state with a Republican who may stand on the bubble, it does pay to contact that person. To find out who they are, scour the MSM and political press and look for quotes indicating they are vacillating.

Mostly though, what we should all be thinking ahead about is what we will do after these people are confirmed. For example, Doug Burgum is the likely next head of Interior. Think sacrifice of public lands, lots of fracking, tons of oil and gas leases. If this is your issue, align with the groups who will work to sue him. Scott Turner, who will head HUD, will look for ways to basically increase homelessness. I am not making this up. If this is your issue, look for ways to work with state and local agencies and NGOs to find ways to mitigate the damage. You get the idea — research the nominees (BECOME A TRUSTED SOURCE :-) ) and think about ways to overcome their cruelty, ineptitude and fundamental insanity. We will need to be creative, in addition to leveraging litigation.

1. If you’re old enough, and watched it on CSpan, you’re chuckling at the memory. It was SUCH A different world.

2. Thanks to Lang from an Indivisible group in Louisiana for putting the chart together, and yes, there’s more past this week.

3. Likely starting with Marco Rubio, who will likely sail quicker and higher than anyone else.

4. As an aside, I live in Pennsylvania, and thus John Fetterman is one of my Senators. I am appalled by his collusion and appeasement, and I either call his office or send a resistbot, or go through his website, on most days, and certainly every time he does something that pisses me off. That’s independent of the nomination process.