In a new era of Republican-led governance, there is little Democrats can do to prevent Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees from being confirmed. But that won’t stop them from trying.



Democratic senators are targeting eight of Trump’s cabinet nominees whom they view as particularly “troublesome” and are pushing for more time to hold hearings on each of them.

“We have asked for fair hearings on all of those nominees,” the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, told reporters on Wednesday. “There are a lot of questions about these nominees.”

The nominees flagged for extra scrutiny include Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs banker turned Hollywood movie financier with no government experience, as Treasury secretary; Rex Tillerson, who headed the biggest oil company in the world, as secretary of state, and the nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, an Alabama senator who has been accused of making racially insensitive comments, which derailed his nomination to be a federal judge under Ronald Reagan.

Democrats have little leverage to prevent Trump’s nominees from being confirmed but they can significantly delay the process. Trump’s cabinet nominees will need 51 votes in the Senate to be confirmed and Republicans hold 52 seats.

On Wednesday, several Senate Democrats held private meetings with Trump nominees and later shared their initial reactions. Though all declined to say whether they would support the nominee, they signalled what the points of contention might be in the upcoming hearings.

After a private meeting with Sessions on Wednesday, Dick Durbin, the second-highest ranking Senate Democrat, signalled that race and civil rights would be a key topic in his confirmation hearing next week.

“Certainly there are elements in his background that raise questions,” Durbin said after their meeting, referring to allegations that Sessions was racially insensitive. “He said several times, point blank, that this was not an issue as far as he was concerned.”

Beyond his past comments, Durbin said he was concerned by Sessions’ views on voter ID laws and immigration. He also said he was dismayed that the Alabama Republican did not commit to following through on the recommendations outlined in a forthcoming report by the justice department’s civil rights division on the Chicago police department’s use of force.

Before the meeting ended, Durbin said he offered Sessions the book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson. “I’m hoping he’ll take a look at it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Tillerson met members of the foreign relations committee on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, one week before he is scheduled to testify before them.

Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, said he was “generally encouraged” by his conversation with Tillerson, although he said he wanted to hear more before deciding whether to support his nomination.

Several senators, including Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, have raised concerns about Tillerson’s posture towards Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin.

Coons took issue with the confirmation schedule, saying next week seemed too soon for members to hold a hearing on Tillerson, given Republicans’ current plans to also vote on repealing Barack Obama’s healthcare law.

To rush the confirmation process “strikes me as trying to get too many things done at the same time”, he said, adding that he had been up all night preparing for his meeting with Tillerson.

The Democrats’ list also includes Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier and prospective head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Tom Price, a prominent opponent of the Affordable Care Act, for secretary of health and human services, Andy Puzder, a fast food executive and critic of raising the minimum wage, as labor secretary, Congressman Mick Mulvaney, a fiscal conservative, as director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Betsy DeVos, a staunch supporter of school choice, Trump’s education secretary nominee.

After a meeting with DeVos on Wednesday, Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, said in a statement that she continued to have “serious concerns” about DeVos’s “long record of working to privatize and defund public education, expand taxpayer-funded private school vouchers, and block accountability for charter schools, including for-profit charter schools”.

Confirmation hearings are scheduled to begin for Trump’s cabinet picks next week, with several already slated for 11 January. But before they get under way, Democrats are demanding at least two days of hearings for each cabinet nominee and have requested that they do not overlap so that members can “spend a lot of time studying” for them.

“I would like to succeed in negotiating something where we get full and fair hearings – we’re not trying to be dilatory – and hear what these nominees have to say,” Schumer said. “There are so many issues about so many of them that to rush them through would be a disservice to the American people.”

In response, Republicans are now accusing Democrats of obstructionism, an echo of the charge levied by Democrats against Republicans during the Obama years.

The majority leader, Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, said he expected the Senate to be ready to confirm a number of Trump’s cabinet nominees shortly after Inauguration Day, on 20 January, adding that in 2009 the Senate approved seven of Barack Obama’s nominees.

“I believe all the president-elect’s cabinet appointments will be confirmed,” McConnell told reporters on Wednesday, speaking before Schumer. “I think it would be great if the Democrats would understand that, particularly with regard to the national security team, the secretary of defense, CIA, homeland security, it would make a lot of sense to have those folks in place on day one and I hope we’re getting to the point where that will be possible.”

Schumer scoffed at the notion of a precedent. “Leader McConnell has talked about the fact that a lot of nominees were approved in President Obama’s first few days after he was inaugurated, but they all had their paperwork in early, their ethics reports, their 90-day plan to extricate themselves from conflicts, their FBI briefings,” he said.

Absent from the list of nominees Democrats are targeting is Marine General James Mattis, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, who will need a congressional waiver to be confirmed.

After meeting privately with Mattis on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, said she still opposed a waiver of the law that requires that defense secretaries be removed from the military for at least seven years.

“He has served our country admirably,” Gillibrand told reporters after their meeting. “He is well-regarded as an extraordinary general, and I am very grateful for that service, and I’m very grateful that he’s willing to continue his service for the president-elect. But I still believe that civilian control of our military is fundamental to the American democracy.”

The Senate is also preparing for a pitched battle over Trump’s future choice to replace Antonin Scalia on the supreme court, which will require 60 votes.

“Apparently, there’s yet a new standard which is to not confirm a supreme court nominee at all,” McConnell said on Wednesday, referring to a remark Schumer made the previous evening on MSNBC that Democrats would “absolutely” keep the vacancy open if the nominee were outside the mainstream. “I think that’s something the American people simply will not tolerate.”

On Wednesday, Schumer moderated his comments.

“Let’s see who they nominate,” Schumer told reporters. “If they’re in the mainstream, we’ll give them a very careful look. If they’re out of the mainstream, we’ll oppose them tooth and nail.”

Asked how he would define mainstream, Schumer replied: “You know it when you see it.”

Senate Republicans blocked Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Scalia for more than nine months.