WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has confirmed 48 of President Donald Trump’s nominees at once, voting for the first time under new rules to begin clearing a backlog of executive branch positions that had been delayed by Democrats.
Frustrated by the stalling tactics, Senate Republicans moved last week to make it easier to confirm large groups of lower-level, non-judicial nominations. Democrats had forced multiple votes on almost every one of Trump’s picks, infuriating the president and tying up the Senate floor.
The new rules allow Senate Republicans to move multiple nominees with a simple majority vote — a process that would have previously been blocked with just one objection. The rules don’t apply to judicial nominations or high-level Cabinet posts.
“Republicans have fixed a broken process,” Thune said ahead of the vote.
The Senate voted 51-47 to confirm the four dozen nominees. Thune said that those confirmed on Thursday had all received bipartisan votes in committee, including deputy secretaries for the Departments of Defense, Interior, Energy and others.
Among the confirmed are Jonathan Morrison, the new administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Kimberly Guilfoyle as U.S. ambassador to Greece. Guilfoyle is a former California prosecutor and television news personality who led the fundraising for Trump’s 2020 campaign and was once engaged to Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.
of course they gave kimberly gargoyle a position.
Obama had thousands of unconfirmed appointees because Republicans blocked them for his entire term
Mitch mcconnel and gingrich were spearheading those blocks.
Sure. That’s because Democrats are political morons and spinless assholes.
Even now, spineless.
they also had 10 DINOS at the time to vote against them.
And party leadership should whip DINOS into shape.
Instead, the party consistently coddles and enables them.
Breaking News: Three Supreme Court Justices dies under mysterious circumstances, meanwhile trump’s three Supreme Court Justice Nominees approved within 2 hours.
Democrats had forced multiple votes on almost every one of Trump’s picks, infuriating the president and tying up the Senate floor.
Yet the “Both sides” group will still continue to say the Dems aren’t even trying.
They’re fucking not. They could have done this exact fucking thing at any point since 2008, bUt tHAt wOuLD HavE beEn tOo DiVisiVE.
Do not pretend for a fucking second that the Democratic Party is in any way, shape or form competent. Do not pretend for a fucking second that the Democratic Party did anything but pave the way for this fascist regime with their ineptitude and greed, thus enabling the shattering of the American republic.
Thune said that those confirmed on Thursday had all received bipartisan votes in committee
According to the article the Democrats are still helping Trump get these fascists appointed.
51-47. A few Dems is not the entire party.
If the party wanted, they could take those Dems off all committee assignments and cut them off of all party funds unless they work with the party. Instead the party continues to support these people. This tells us those in charge of the party, Chuck Schumer and co, support their actions.
if israel wasnt obvious already. The old guard is basically just the republicans lite.
a very simple question: did it work?
all they have done so far are this kind of performative, petty, menial and ineffective resistances, yet on anything that has mattered, they capitulated.
please point me to anything effective they have done. so far the most hopeful thing i’ve seen is Zohran Mamdani getting the nomination, and the congressional Democrats still haven’t endorsed him yet.
yes it did work. They delayed his nominations for a long time as the minority party. they did the most effective thing possible in the situation.
In this very thread people are blaming the Dems for not being fascists themselves under Biden and Obama.
This is not fascism, ending the fillibuster is not fascism.
The Democrats should have done so when they were in government to try and implement the things they were elected for.
America’s broken political system certainly had a role in it’s slide to fascism.
No. You’re deeply mischaracterizing the situation.
The Democrats could have, at any point since 2008, responded to Republican obstructionism with this very same policy. It has been brutally apparent for well over two decades that the GOP was not negotiating in good faith, and would never again negotiate in good faith. The Democratic Party refused to even consider employing even the most basic precepts of game theory. They continued to negotiate with a bad faith actor in good faith, and were somehow constantly surprised when said bad faith actor acted in bad faith. That’s not politics. That’s rank idiocy.
Fascism is when you don’t roll over for fascists in the name of norms, which the fascists don’t have to follow.
Yep. The both sides people are sure helpful in all of this.
I wanted to reply to numerous comments, but I’ll just do it here. The people aggrieved that democrats/liberals/the left didn’t do more are not wrong for being upset, even very upset. Things are generally better for everyone, in recent history, under left-side leadership. But our representatives have been beset by corporate capture since the 80s/90s so by my estimation politics has been a performative art for my entire lifetime. Still anyone with their head above water knows you’ve got better quality of life under democrats, even if they are deceptive or corrupt.
The system needs replacement. It has been captured whole by multi-national industry, corporations, investment interests, and billionaires. It is currently being bent and corrupted to the point of no return. Even if democrats work for us, they only give us so much before bending for their donor money. I’ve always had this vague notion that for even the best intentioned, there’s only so far you can climb the ladder of politics before you refuse a bribe, or lobbying money, and they just boot your ass. Or blacklist you, or whatever, you just get locked out. I dunno how to end this, except to say that the whole world needs a massive paradigm shift, and it just doesn’t look like we gettin it.
You’re in a thread where the republicans are destroying the government into an authoritarian state and you’re saying we “need a new system.” Dude, you better show some receipts of people who have done this in the situation we’re in. Details on how this should be done.
If you’re saying communism or pure socialism (no democracy). You’ll have my go to request: Name one country that has done communism or pure socialism that has lasted more than 5 years in the history of the world.
lmao socialism and democracy aren’t exclusive, you’re thinking of capitalism and democracy. If you want an example of effective democracy in a socialist country, Cuba had just over 90% in favor of their last constitutional referendum, which enshrined LGBT rights, among other things. This required years of meetings, debate, and organizing at the local level.
You want America to be like Cuba? Do you mean the bread lines? Cuz there are government allotted bread lines.
The bread lines were caused by being under blockade by a superpower nextdoor for 70 years.
Were you under the impression they were caused by Cuba being too democratic?
pure socialism (no democracy)
Why would that EVER be an option? Socialism is an economic system while democracy is a political one. You cannot have one functioning without the other. You want a socialist fascist state instead?
Name one country that has done communism or pure socialism that has lasted more than 5 years in the history of the world.
The Scandinavian states…? Wtf is “pure socialism”?
We’re maybe a week away from the enabling act
The Enabling Act allowed the Reich government to issue laws without the consent of Germany’s parliament, laying the foundation for the complete Nazification of German society.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-enabling-act
🤣 Twenty years of this shit. Twenty years of people saying “You can’t do anything in the Senate without 60 votes” back and forth at one another endlessly. Twenty. Fucking. Years. 😂
I never want to hear shit about how Clinton / Obama / Biden “tried hard” again. I never want to hear shit about “We can’t pack the courts, its unprecedented” or “This obviously qualified person is too radical to survive confirmation”. You liberals deserve what you fucking get. Damn shame the rest of us are getting dragged along behind your worthless asses.
Are you saying that the Republicans going nuclear is the left’s fault? Wow, just wow. The Republicans are destroying our government, but somehow, somehow, that’s the left’s fault. That’s like saying that every victim everywhere deserved it.
Psst. See Murc’s Law.
in American politics, only Democrats are assumed to have agency. Republicans are like rocks rolling down hill or perhaps sharks eating seals: they do what they do because that’s just what they are, so there’s no point in holding them responsible for anything, since they could not do ottherwise.
there’s no point in holding them responsible
Wouldn’t “holding them responsible” mean prosecuting them? Who has the power to do that?
The majority. When the dems had majority, they impeached him. The republican majority let him go.
The dems appointed an AG who chose not to prosecute Trump because that would be political.
They’re saying the dems not going nuclear under Obama and Biden is the problem.
“We should have turned authoritarian before they did”, basically.
It’s a valid point when the republicans were telegraphing their intentions to do so the whole time. Should have seized power, disposed of the traitors and restructured the laws to fix the loopholes that allowed it to happen in the first place. Biden would have been great for this since he was already old as shit and they could have thrown him under the bus after the fact.
Implementing fair voting laws is not authoritarianism.
And how does one “implement a law”?
You’re seriously asking how members of Congress can “implement a law?”
Schoolhouse Rock can explain it to you better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ8psP4S6BQ
I know what they’re saying, lol. It’s Obama’s fault that the Republicans are pieces of shit.
It’s only the left fault because the left doesn’t want them to do it and the Nazis want to do what they want to do. With Republicans the ends always justify the means in this case the ends mean Confederates won‽
Republicans have been destroying our government for decades and decades and we now see the Democrats had the tools to undo the damage but never actually followed through with any of it.
Perhaps the original sin of the Obama Administration was that they never dismantled the post 9/11 surveillance state. It was almost a perfect Tolkien allegory. They had this great, terrible, and Constitutionally dubious power they inherited from the prior administration. They could choose to use it or destroy it. Unfortunately our leaders are not as noble as hobbits, so Obama chose to keep the power for himself.
Plus letting Bush and Cheney off on their war crimes so that we could “heal as a nation” certainly didnt help either. Biden, while not stating as much, did the same thing with Trump after all his illegal actions including J6, and only decided to pretend to do something a few months before the '24 election after he’d already secured the RNC nomination.
Removed by mod
It doesn’t really matter now. There won’t be any more elections, and the laws dont matter.
There won’t be any more elections
We’ve got two gubernatorial races and a whole mess of municipal races coming in November. So that remains to be seen.
But when see front-runners for primaries coddling up to fascism all up and down the Dem slate, it does not fill me with optimism for the future.
It makes me sick. I don’t want to leave the country, but I might be leaving the country.
Did that almost a year ago, only thing I miss is Waffle House (I never actually liked waffle house, but having it available at 2AM was comforting) and some friends who are still working on getting out.
Facists: Exist
DAMNED LIBRULS
???
DAMNED LIBRULS
For not taking action when they had the majorities.
Seems like a fair criticism.
And electorally, their inaction cost them. FDR’s popularity rose because he did shit. There’s this view democrats have that they only have limited political capital and they have to choose where to ‘spend it’, but it just doesn’t work that way.
Yep. Republicans have the rabid following that they do because they accomplish tasks. Horrible, fucked up, stupid tasks that should never have even been tabled for discussion, but they get them done. 99% of Democrat messaging my entire lifetime has been “We’re gonna do [X]! Oh, wait, no, we can’t do [X] because we don’t have a supermajority. Shucks. Well, we’ll surely get 'em next time if you just vote for me again!” and people are, understandably, getting fucking tired of that. Especially when these same Dem voters watch every single conservative election cycle jam through abject bullshit without pushback. If they can get these things done then why can’t you? Why can Trump loot my 401k and Medicaid directly into his own pockets but Obama couldn’t enact universal health care? Why do we only ever ratchet toward the right?
Democrats have been chasing the mythical “centrist swing voter” for decades while voters have increasingly polarized into left vs right and the centrists have evaporated. Anyone who remains a centrist, now, isn’t even going to go vote because politics clearly do not play any part in their lives.
We now have the additional problem of the rabid MAGA crowd being so vehemently anti-Democrat that not only would they never vote blue no matter what they were promised, they’re statistically likely to go make attempts on the lives of Democratic officials or those running for office. So anyone who wants to run as a Democrat with an actual progressive platform are putting double the number of targets on themselves.
I think the only real way forward is a third party, one that can sidestep our red vs blue team sports mentality and say look, things are pretty bad for everyone right now. You don’t have to vote for a Democrat or a Republican to make things better. You can come vote for us instead, we’ll get this train back on track and you don’t have to go tell the boys that you voted for a Democrat
…But then our problem becomes making this third party actually electable, which has historically been a huge problem in America.
Honestly, the democratic brand is so tainted the the left really should embrace a strategy of running independents in solid red states. They’re receptive to a Bernie style message (tell them big Ag is trying to buy your farm, go big on right to repair so John Deere can’t screw you on parts, tell them that Medicare for all is actually good for small businesses that can’t compete on health care, etc), but after decades of right wing propaganda you can’t do anything under a democratic banner in those places (especially since the democratic party would put their thumb on the scale for the centrist guy in a primary).
I mean it’s 100% fair criticism, honestly. The part where it falls down for me is where the solution always seems to be “Don’t vote for Democrats!” (and then leaves the room, walking proudly)
Almost everyone in Washington is a piece of shit, although the Republicans are much worse. If you want to have another FDR, you have to have another several decades of labor movement before that, fighting for change from the bottom up. And then the political class is the last to come around, and they can lock in and extend some of the changes you fought for. “Democrats are POS” is mostly true. “Let’s get less engaged to politics / It doesn’t matter who wins the election” is a fucking horrifying reaction and plan to cope with that and make it better.
I’ve heard many people on Lemmy say that they’re not planning to engage with the electoral system until the Democrats get better on their own. All I can say to that strategy is, better start looking around for where to move to that’ll give you the best shot at having a pretty comfortable ICE facility to call home going forward. And if you identify as any kind of anarchist / Marxist / anything like that, if you are at all engaged with any kind of counterculture or activism and you’re still in the US, you should probably be making plans to leave, because for you it will probably be much much worse.
They expect Democrats to cater to people who don’t bother to vote because nothing is ever good enough.
“Bold strategy Cotton. We’ll see how it works out for them.”
Considering the Democrats are a minority in every single branch of government, I’d say its a bold strategy on their part to continually ignore their own base in favor of the Republican base.
The base that doesn’t vote for them?
Correct, the republican base does not and has never voted for a democratic candidate in meaningful numbers. However, trying to be republican-lite does a great job of decreasing turnout with your own base.
There’s that whole thing about everything in the US taking this horrifying downwards turn right around 1970, by all these different metrics, and there’s not really an obvious reason for it. I actually have one speculative theory on that: I think that in the 1968 Democratic convention, the Chicago cops beat the fuck out of a lot of the most passionate and engaged leftist activists the country had out in the street, and the lesson they took away from that (sorta reasonably, even though the Chicago cops certainly were not Democrats) was “fuck the whole political system then, I don’t care, I’m out and fuck you.” McGovern suffered his absolutely heartbreaking shutout in 1972, and the Democrats just stopped winning elections completely for the next 20 years, and eventually they learned their lesson and became Republicans. We went from JFK and LBJ to Clinton, and the new era of 1990s / 2000s horrors was born with no left representation anywhere in Washington.
So yeah, I agree with you. There’s not really any reason to think that anyone in Washington would react to the electoral disengagement of the left by moving any direction other than right, and I think there is a good argument for a strong precedent of them moving far right and the whole country getting fucked over a barrel up to and including the present day because of it.
Clinton only won in 92 because Ross Perot split the vote. Obama (and biden) won because people thought they were going to help them, and were further disaffected when they turned out to be republican-lite. You can’t pretend dems moving right does anything but further disaffect their base. You have to really really loath your base to lose against a party as malicious and incompetent as the republicans.
Never change guys
Never change
Fair, and pointless.
It’s not pointless. If we all complain when conservatives flush the rules down the toilet and kick open Pandora’s box, then do nothing when liberals lick their corporate donors’ toes while fretting over the propriety of the tiniest changes, then the Overton window keeps moving right and we’re all fucked.
The original complaint is absolutely pointless. It’s bitching about what happened literal decades ago.
Murc’s Law strikes again.
I mean, I don’t think you will have to ever hear it again to be honest. We’re headed into truly uncharted waters. By spring next year it’s hard to say what of our political system will even be recognizable.
More of Murc’s Law, I see.
They don’t call’m “Reactionary” for nothin
The senate structurally favors republicans. It’s to the left’s advantage for it to be slow and inefficient. Now that that’s no longer the case it just means more than ever we need a movement with autonomous power that isn’t subjugated to a system that is designed to disenfranchise us.
You liberals deserve what you fucking get.
It’s true, we really should just start gunning down anyone we see. All we need to start, is to behead some big government people on television. THEN we’ll get universal health care, infrastructure backing to fix the climate, and more money for schools and social programs.
Goddam, how did Clinton / Obama / Biden not see that?
Which is the distraction?
This? Or the Epstein file?Distractions within distractions baby.
How much is in the black budget? What’s it for?
Befitting username
“Republicans have
fixedbroken abrokenfixed process,”Guilfoyle was also married to Gavin Newsom but they don’t tell you about THAT, do they.
and formally engaged to donald jr. SHe jumps in bed with whoever gives her a lavish lifestyle.
Well I wasn’t as much trying to cast aspersions on Guilfoyle, as point at an element of similarity beween Newsom and Donald Jr.
seems a lot less relevant
It was just amusing that they had a blurb about Guilfoyle’s dating history in the article, but didn’t mention her marriage. Anyway, I wouln’t worry. The Senate Parliamentarian will put a stop to this outrage, I’m sure! /s
It’s just not widely mentioned because she had her original face then.
