Summary
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) announced he will block all of Trump’s State Department nominees until USAID is reinstated.
His move comes after Elon Musk took control of USAID, placed senior staff on leave, and seized classified information.
Schatz condemned the administration’s “authoritarian behavior” and vowed to delay confirmations until USAID operates normally.
His blockade could significantly slow Trump’s ability to fill key diplomatic positions, forcing Senate Republicans to spend more time pushing nominations through.
Good as a start, but come on guys, you’ve had decades to learn from Mitch McConnell how to do this! Stymie them at every turn. Filibuster everything. Make them drag the anchor for every move. Propose bills that would block them, even if they’re doomed to fail, to slow down the process.
Trust me, this is one time your constituents DON’T want you to be the party of smooth-running government! We don’t want to slide off the cliff into fascism!
Democrats are so bad at this. You could literally bring everything to a standstill by requiring votes on everything, even things everyone agrees with
And they should do actual filibusters and do 2am quorum calls to keep the GOP in the building at all times.
Almost like they’re not trying
Trump 45 was happy to let his appointees work as interim this-or-that or acting whatchamacallit, and those people seemed to have exactly as much authority as confirmed appointees. Maybe they didn’t get the full paycheck? but senate confirmation seems to be completely unnecessary to the exercise of power when everyone just goes along anyway.
I’d be pretty happy to see Dems grind congress to an halt with investigations of absolutely everything, filibusters of everything else, and red card holds, or whatever other magical Senate traditions allow single Senators to completely stifle government activity.