Congress
Delays fuel GOP blame game over Trump nominees
With less than two weeks until Donald Trump takes the oath of office, only a small handful of his nominees appear on track for immediate confirmation — sparking tensions between the Senate GOP and Trump’s inner circle.
At a private lunch on Tuesday, Republican senators discussed whether they should — or even could, under law and Senate rules — advance Trump nominees without final FBI background checks, financial disclosures and other paperwork, according to a person in the room.
They discussed whether they could at least hold confirmation hearings without documents submitted, holding off on final action until the process is complete. And the subject of nominations could come up again Wednesday evening, when Trump meets with Republican senators on Capitol Hill.
The internal debate surrounds what has become an obsession for the president-elect and his top allies.
Soon after his victory in November, Trump and his allies pushed to get as many of his top officials confirmed on Day One as possible. Transition chair Howard Lutnick privately pushed Senate Republican leaders to make a splash with a bunch of Inauguration Day confirmations, according to a GOP aide, who like others interviewed for this story was granted anonymity to describe private discussions.
Trump loved the idea and proceeded to quickly announce key nominations for that very purpose. Yet several committee chairs have suggested it could be a week or more after the inauguration before key appointees see real progress, and a blame game is breaking out behind the scenes.
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said a planned hearing for Trump’s attorney general pick, Pam Bondi, could be pushed back due to a delayed FBI background check. The Senate Intelligence Committee has not yet received a pre-hearing questionnaire from Director of National Intelligence designee Tulsi Gabbard, according to a person familiar with her confirmation, complicating plans to hold her hearing next week. (A spokesperson for Gabbard, Alexa Henning, said she is “working in lockstep” with the panel.)
Senate HELP Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said much the same Tuesday about Education secretary pick Linda McMahon: “It really depends on us getting paperwork,” Cassidy said about the timeline. “Right now the hold seems to be on their side.”
Only a small handful of nominations — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for secretary of State, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for UN ambassador and John Ratcliffe for CIA director — appear to be in the conversation for potential Day 1 action.
As Cassidy intimated, the sniping is starting to bubble to the surface. Some Senate Republicans are privately bemoaning the Trump transition wasting time debating whether to conduct FBI background checks, which have long been standard procedure for high-level executive nominees. Distrustful of the FBI, Trump initially wanted to engage private firms instead, but Senate Republicans ultimately convinced him the confirmations would go smoother if he stuck with protocol.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has personally encouraged nominees in his meetings with them to get their paperwork in as fast as possible, according to a GOP official familiar with those conversations. Yet Republican aides say delays have persisted with some of them.
“If a nominee hasn’t submitted their paperwork in a timely fashion, there’s only so much the Senate can do,” said one of those GOP aides. “The Senate is doing everything we can to move forward, but there’s just a lot of bureaucracy.”
Amid the tensions, Thune has privately told Republicans that it’s up to individual committee chairs to decide how to handle their nominees — to stick with the established process or press ahead without full documentation.
Those in the latter camp appear to include Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has moved to schedule a Jan. 14 hearing for Energy secretary nominee Doug Burgum over the objections of panel Democrats. They said Wednesday that they had not yet received Burgum’s paperwork.
“This is a breach of protocol and precedent, established over decades by Chairs of both parties,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the panel’s top Democrat, said.
Lee appears to be part of a bloc that “sees it like, we just need to move ahead and, you know, when these documents come in, they come in,” said one of the aforementioned Republican aides.
But other Republicans are balking at overriding longstanding committee rules. What’s the point of holding a hearing, they say, without having all the necessary information in hand?
“We think it’s important because we think it helps the individuals move through the process more smoothly than if they didn’t have it,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Tuesday. “It just makes it a lot simpler to get through the process.”
The paperwork questions have been especially sensitive for nominees and committees related to national security. Trump advisers have been pushing Senate Republicans to prioritize those confirmations, especially after last week’s terror attack in New Orleans.
“The threats aren’t taking a pause while the Senate kinda thinks about it,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), the incoming national security adviser, said on Fox News last week. “We need them now.”
Asked Tuesday whether background checks are a prerequisite for hearings, Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is handling the Gabbard and Ratcliffe nominations, had two words: “No comment.”
The sense of urgency from Trump and his allies doesn’t necessarily correspond to the recent historical record on early Cabinet confirmations. In 2017, he saw only two nominees confirmed on his first day: Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Secretary Secretary John Kelly.
Most others — including his selections for attorney general and secretaries of State, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, HHS, Commerce and Education — came in February, with still others seeing confirmation later in the spring.
President Joe Biden lagged further behind. He had no nominees confirmed on Jan. 20, 2021. Three were confirmed in January, five in February and the rest in March.
But Senate Republicans are looking to move faster amid fears that the Trump pressure campaign could mount, which has caused “anxiety” among committee chairs, the previously mentioned GOP aide told us. So far Trump himself has suggested Democrats are to blame for any delays — not his own team’s documentation snafus. But there are signs that the pressure is about to turn to Senate Republicans.
Thune has privately spoken about wanting to return to the “Obama-era” confirmation standard, referring to the nearly dozen nominees President Barack Obama saw confirmed during his first week in office. As POLITICO reported Tuesday, he has started conversations with Democrats about trying to move noncontroversial nominees quickly that first week.
But Thune is also protective of the Senate’s prerogatives — and the wishes of his members who want to preserve them.
“I think you give great deference and latitude to a president when it comes to people he wants to put into key positions,” Thune said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “But the Senate has a role: advise and consent. … We have a lot of our senators who take that role very seriously.”
Jordain Carney, John Sakellariadis, Ursula Perano and Mackenzie Wilkes contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump announced the next chief for the White House’s Capitol Hill strategy on Saturday night, picking Katie Bailey, a former Republican Hill staffer.
Bailey will replace James Braid in the role of director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, which oversees nominations and confirmations of Cabinet roles, relationships on Capitol Hill and the White House’s legislative priorities. Braid left the job in September.
Bailey has served as deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs since the beginning of the summer. She formerly worked for Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana and former Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and served in roles on multiple committees.
Trump commended Bailey for assisting with the confirmations of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, saying she has “already delivered strong results.”
“After previously working on Capitol Hill, Katie understands how the Executive and Legislative Branches of Government can most effectively work together to achieve Great Success for the American People,” the president wrote in a social media post Saturday night.
Bailey takes over the role ahead of the midterm elections, which could alter the power dynamics in Washington substantially if Democrats seize control of either chamber of Congress. The result, which the White House has begun preparing for, could include congressional subpoenas, depositions and investigations, as happened during the latter half of Trump’s first term in office, when Democrats flipped the House.
Trump’s approval continues to sag amid soaring gas and diesel prices driven by the war with Iran, leaving Democrats bullish that the map will continue to grow for them.
SYRACUSE, New York — President Donald Trump came to New York on Friday to help a Republican win an uphill race for governor. But his visit was also a reminder of the complicated role he plays in his party’s fight to keep control of Congress.
Trump rallied alongside GOP gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman, calling on New Yorkers to fire Gov. Kathy Hochul and, referring to the state attorney general, “her totally corrupt sidekick, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James.”
“Your city and state are dirty, filthy places, and everybody wants to leave,” he told some 5,000 attendees at a convention center in downtown Syracuse — which, he noted, was “a short distance from the beautiful shores of Lake America.”
“You gotta get your act together, and I tell you what, Bruce Blakeman will get your act together,” Trump said.
For Republicans, the president’s appearance underscored a political dilemma that extends beyond New York: Even as Trump increasingly appears to be a drag on their ticket, they need his loyal supporters to energize their base. While voters have soured on the president’s handling of the economy and costs, he remains a potent force in turning out MAGA voters — even in an otherwise Democratic-dominated state.
“The targeting of where the president goes is not a random exercise,” Marist University pollster Lee Miringoff said. “They’re looking to stir the base without stirring the opposition. They’re picking and choosing, that’s not uncommon. For him to come to New York to help the turnout upstate is a positive for the Republicans and his base.”
Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, hasn’t distanced himself from the president — nor have most of the top officials in New York’s GOP. Nearly every Republican running a competitive congressional race in this half of the state came to Friday’s rally, eager to make their presence known.
“I’m always happy to be with the president,” said Anthony Constantino, who’s running in a nearby red district that’s inched into toss-up territory. “He’s the leader of the free world, and I’m excited to have a great relation with him.”
Some GOP operatives, however, have quietly grumbled that their candidates need to start creating some distance from the president. Republicans from other parts of the state like Rep. Mike Lawler decided that campaigning in their districts was more valuable than trekking to be seen with Trump — as did several down-ballot candidates in Central New York. Democrats, notably, have been just as eager to highlight the visit.
“This is supposed to be a swing district. And the feedback I get is that the president is very unpopular,” said Democratic Rep. John Mannion, who represents Syracuse and the surrounding Central New York area. “He still certainly will have his core base of supporters, but I do think he’s lost support here compared to what he had around the 2024 election.”
Blakeman, for his part, isn’t worried about Trump’s drop in popularity.
“Kathy Hochul should be worried about her drop in popularity,” he said before taking the stage in Syracuse. “She’s the most unpopular governor in the history of the state of New York.”
Trump’s visit came against the backdrop of a darkening political environment for New York Republicans.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement shot a man in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, stirring fresh condemnation of Trump’s aggressive deportation policies. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has a surprisingly warm relationship with the president, called on him to cease all ICE activity in the five boroughs. Hochul stressed that the shooting took place with a five-year-old child present and demanded that federal authorities “provide answers.”
Immigration is one of several areas where Blakeman has hewed close to the Trump wing of the party throughout his campaign.
“I’m outraged with Kathy Hochul for taking sides with somebody who was a convicted felon, someone who was an alleged drug dealer, a gang member,” he said Friday about the shooting in Manhattan.
While Trump’s speech repeatedly careened back to the rhetoric one could expect from any of his rallies — boasts about the stock market, complaints about ‘Dumocrats’ — he did manage to seamlessly blend almost all of Blakeman’s oft-used talking points into his stump speech.
“Since Hochul took office, she’s raised your utility rates 48 times, and energy prices in New York have skyrocketed 100 percent,” Trump said. “If Bruce Blakeman gets in, he will cut your electric bills by 70, 80, 90 percent.”
The climate outside of deep blue New York City is also turning increasingly hostile to the GOP. Constantino, who’s running to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik in upstate New York, trails his Democratic foe Blake Gendebien by 4 points, a Siena Research Institute survey released Friday morning found. A Blue Light News poll showed that nationally one in four Trump voters believe Republican candidates should break from the president in order to win in November.
The wisdom of appearing with Trump has been debated by Republicans throughout the country at a time when gas prices are high and a foreign war drags on. And New York Democrats aren’t viewing the presidential visit as a concern.
Much of Hochul’s messaging this year has focused on making sure New Yorkers know Blakeman and Trump are friends. Her most-aired TV commercial features a puppeteer saying one Republican would do the other’s bidding.
“Puppets are my life. You tell them what to say, they say it,” the narrator says. “But that’s not what you want in a governor.”
Earlier in the day during an MSNOW interview, Hochul dismissed the rally.
“It’s obviously a very political event,” she said. “It seems like a last-ditch effort to breathe some life into a campaign that’s on life support.”
Despite his low approval ratings with voters, Trump’s visit stands to light up a Republican base that Blakeman will need to turn out next month to help him defeat Hochul.
Polling has shown the governor leading the GOP nominee by as much as 18 points in this deep blue state. Yet some Trump supporters maintain the president can help generate much-needed enthusiasm for Blakeman, especially in areas of upstate New York where the Long Island native is not well known.
“We actually have the ability to win these elections, but I just don’t see the enthusiasm out there,” Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar said. “Hochul has won the day as far as being a terrible governor, but now we’ve got to get our people out to vote.”
Winning is still a tall order for Blakeman — especially in a tough national political environment where polls show GOP candidates in red states like Texas, Ohio and Kansas struggling against Democratic challengers.
Republicans have not won statewide in New York since George Pataki secured a third term in 2002. Since then, the GOP has lost all levers of statewide power, and Trump’s tariffs as well as his decision to launch a war in Iran have not helped him fulfill his campaign pledge of addressing voters’ cost concerns.
The president’s political woes aren’t going unnoticed.
Privately, Republican operatives grumbled that the president’s visit put swing seat candidates in an uncomfortable spot.
“There’s a lot of commiserating between folks within the party structure — why is this happening? Why is he doing this?” said one Republican operative who was granted anonymity to freely discuss the dynamic. “Then you’ve got the blind loyalists who say, ‘Yay Trump’s coming’ — people who are too politically dumb to understand the ramifications of it.”
Yet the head of the Republican party kept his message very much in line with Hochul’s.
“Please pretend I’m on the ballot,” Trump told Central New Yorkers.
Sen. Chris Murphy wants Democrats to go big for Angie Nixon in Florida’s Senate race — and he’s pushing to raise some “serious money” to help.
“I do believe that we’d make a big mistake if we slept on Florida,” the Connecticut Democrat told Blue Light News on Friday. “I know it feels like a longer shot, but I just think this year is looking exceptional.”
Murphy plans to hit the trail with Nixon as part of a campaign swing for Senate candidates over the next three weeks that will take him through North Carolina and Florida, as well as events with Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and Chris Pappas in New Hampshire. Murphy will serve as a surrogate for El-Sayed in the spin room at his next debate, and said he’s “just a big believer” in the Michigan Senate nominee.
Murphy’s bullishness about a blue wave comes as Senate Democrats are pushing the boundaries of a midterm battle map that is shifting further into red territory. The Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC has dropped roughly $5 million apiece into Texas and Kansas over recent days, and the minority leader has included Kansas and Mississippi in his pitches to donors.
“If I were in charge, I would definitely put some resources in Florida,” Murphy said. “When you have an exciting candidate like this, it’s a good long-term investment” in growing Democrats’ activist base.
Still, Murphy stressed he’s “not making any formal recommendations” on where Schumer or top Democratic campaign groups should move their money.
“They’ve got so many mouths to feed,” Murphy said. “That’s why I’m going to try to step up and do some work on my own.”
Murphy, who is considered a potential 2028 presidential contender, has spread roughly $2.5 million across candidates, campaign arms and other organizations this cycle. That includes transferring more than $500,000 to Democrats’ three top campaign arms and 25 state parties.
Prominent Democrats have been ramping up their attention on Florida. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has funneled $250,000 toward Nixon’s campaign, along with other resources. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) also told Blue Light News he hopes to campaign with Nixon.
But Democrats across suddenly competitive red states are clamoring for more cash and Florida is an expensive state, complicating the chances of a significant investment from national groups.
Nixon also faces an uphill battle against GOP Sen. Ashley Moody in the Sunshine State. A progressive state lawmaker, Nixon aligned herself with the Democratic Socialists of America over the summer in a state where many voters, especially those with ties to Cuba, reject such an ideology. Also, Republicans in Florida have a 1.5 million voter registration advantage over Democrats.
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