Congress

Delays fuel GOP blame game over Trump nominees

Published

2 years ago

January 8, 2025

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.

Congress

Trump needles Cornyn as Blanche remains blocked

Published

3 hours ago

July 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump goaded John Cornyn on social media Friday morning, accusing the Texas senator of withholding his vote on Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination in retaliation for Trump’s central role in his political demise.

Cornyn, who lost his May primary to Texas’ scandal-ridden attorney general, the Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton, has threatened to block Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee until the White House promises to permanently shelve its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” in writing — something Trump appears unwilling to do.

“John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called “Fund,” which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Several Republicans bristled at the fund, which could have been deployed to compensate Americans who faced charges after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and which gives the president and his family audit immunity over taxes. At his July confirmation hearing, Blanche said that the fund, part of a settlement the president reached with the IRS, was defunct. But the administration has been “reluctant to change” the text of the settlement, Cornyn told reporters Thursday.

Trump signaled his continued support for the Jan 6 rioters on Friday.

“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!” he wrote. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”

On Thursday, the president suggested that he could punt a Senate vote on Blanche until after Cornyn — and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — leaves the chamber at the end of the year. Cornyn, however, suggested on social media that there are other Republican senators with concerns about the fund.

“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” Cornyn told reporters.

Congress

Capitol agenda: The Senate’s fly-out agenda takes shape

Published

4 hours ago

July 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Republicans are prepping a jam-packed — if somewhat optimistic — agenda for their final week before summer recess.

Majority Leader John Thune wants to move stopgap funding through Dec. 11, bipartisan Russia sanctions legislation and a bloc of nominees — perhaps including attorney general pick Todd Blanche.

He’s also under pressure from President Donald Trump, administration officials and many of his GOP colleagues to adopt a budget resolution — the first step in unlocking another party-line spending bill.

Leaders are prioritizing the stopgap, though. Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) expects continuing resolution text to be unveiled later today, she told reporters Thursday, and an initial vote is expected Monday evening.

Still TBD: Collins wants to use the funding patch to block the Trump administration from putting political appointees in charge of approving grants — a demand Democratic senators are also making.

The decision is in Thune’s hands. He acknowledged a “handful of issues” are still under consideration with the CR, and said he’s “hoping both sides can come together and figure” them out.

As for the sanctions bill, leaders of both parties are still trying to work out a deal to fast-track the legislation amid concerns from some Democrats and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that it gives Trump too much tariff power.

In addition to the nominees package, Thune also hasn’t ruled out an initial vote on the landmark cryptocurrency bill both parties have spent months negotiating or teeing up a bipartisan college sports overhaul now in final stages of talks.

But the big question is whether Republicans can take a major step toward another reconciliation bill by advancing a budget resolution.

Thune met Thursday with Budget Chair Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who said he was “optimistic in terms of how things are kind of coming together.”

Republicans anticipate giving a number of Senate committees instructions for the bill, setting up a lengthy and politically painful process ahead of adoption despite pushes for urgency from the White House.

Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was the latest official to head to Capitol Hill to try and light a fire under top Republicans. But GOP senators don’t necessarily see the urgency.

“The hard part is the president wants to be able to move fast, like an executive can move, and we’re a legislative branch,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). “It doesn’t move that fast.”

What else we’re watching:

— BLANCHE TEETERING: Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general isn’t dead yet. But it’s certainly on life support. The acting AG met with Cornyn and Tillis Thursday at NRSC headquarters, and one person familiar with the discussion said the group was “working collaboratively now.” But it would now be difficult to confirm him before August recess under Senate rules.

— FARM BILL TEXT: Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman said his farm bill legislative text — originally expected Thursday — could come Friday or Saturday. The bill, which is expected to include language allowing year-round E15 sales and a potential compromise on postponing GOP-led cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is set to be marked up Thursday.

Jordain Carney and Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.

Congress

Former MLB star Mark Teixeira to hit campaign trail with GOP leaders

Published

7 hours ago

July 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House GOP leaders are planning to bring former MLB star Mark Teixeira, one of their top candidate recruits this cycle, out on the trail in battleground districts over the summer recess sprint.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise will host a fundraiser with Teixeira in New York City on Aug. 20 with Speaker Mike Johnson as a special guest, according to three people with direct knowledge of the event, granted anonymity to discuss plans that have not yet been made public.

It’s part of a New York swing where Teixeira and Johnson will also hit nearby stops in GOP Rep. Mike Lawler’s 17th Congressional District and for Mike LiPetri, who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

Teixeira is running to replace GOP Rep. Chip Roy in Texas’ 21st Congressional District. He won a World Series title with the Yankees in 2009 and also played for the Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Angels before retiring from professional baseball in 2016 after 14 seasons.

Because Teixeira has little chance of losing in the deep-red seat, Republican leaders are hoping to harness his star power to boost their candidates in the most competitive races. They’re planning for Teixeira to help campaign in a wider swath of battleground districts in August and through November, including likely stops in Pennsylvania and Georgia.