Why the fuck has no one been doing this for every single nominee since Jan 20th?
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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the republicans sure did it to Biden, Obama, Clinton....it seems the Democrats don't understand how to fight, just to govern...fptp is such a terrible idea....2 parties aren't enough
They understand how to fight very well. Just look at what they do when any progressives have a chance of winning. They choose not to fight.
fptp is such a terrible idea
Sanders and King are independents. I haven't seen them throwing up blanket holds, either.
I'm not American and I don't actually have a clue what this means, but hey, it sounds great.
Good luck with the resistance, stay safe. Peace and love from Australia.
This is a common, boring, toothless tactic routinely used by whichever party is currently in the minority in the Senate. Tommy Tuberville did it in 2023. JD Vance did it in 2023. Tom Cotton did it in 2022. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz did it in 2021. Tammy Duckworth and Chuck Grassley did it in 2020. Chuck Schumer did it in 2019. Tim Scott did it in 2018. And on and on and on...
Blumenthal was Attorney General of Connecticut from 1991 to 2011, when he was elected to the Senate. His net worth is about $100 million. He can afford to take real, actual action against Trump, but he's not. Instead, we get a press release that he's taking his turn to drag his feet a little while Trump drives us off a cliff.
He's part of the Problem Class.
Whoa, how do you keep tabs on all of this?
Most search engines (duckduckgo) allow you to set a custom date range for your search. Repeat the same search ("Senator blocks nominees") year by year, and you keep getting different names for the same pointless stunt.
We are in desperate need of a Guillotine Party to (politically) sever the oligarch heads from the Democratic body.
I'd be happy with "literally" to be frank. And thanks for your informative reply.
As another Australian, I think there are still some key bits that are missing from this explanation. Some of which I know, some I don't.
I know the Senate is responsible for approving appointments to various roles, including cabinet positions and senior civil servant positions. I know there's something about needing a majority in some cases but a supermajority in others, and I believe that's related to times you can and can't use a filibuster.
From what I gather it seems like they do some of these appointments in batches, unless an individual senator disapproves of that. (In the Australian context, this is probably similar to what our Senators and Representatives call "seeking leave".) In which case apparently they have to do them one-by-one, which is slower.
Seeking leave to do something outside the standing orders is a really basic procedural motion, and denying leave is the most minute act of resistance. By all means, use it if you've got it, but it's hardly praiseworthy, to my view. Real action would have been abolishing the filibuster back when you had control over it, rather than using the fact that you only have a bare majority in the Senate as an excuse for not getting anything done. The filibuster is such a grotesque anti-democratic figment of history. It's astonishing that it's lasted as long as it has. I guess because both sides praise it when they're the ones doing it?
:house on fire, 5-alarm:
Blumenthal: "I'll now start throwing some sand at the house to help."
This feels like too little too late.
Might have been nice to get this ball rolling back in January, certainly. But holding up Presidential appointments is a classic stall tactic that has routinely forced Presidents to come to the negotiating table.
Will it work this time? Probably not, because Trump seems content to just do whatever he wants in defiance of law. Is there anything a legislator can do about that (shy of Ides of March style legislating)? Not without buy-in from the legislative majority and the executive bureaucracy (which has already been gutted and filled in with loyalists).
Which is why he'd have done well to block appointments Day 1, rather than let the cabinet fill up with fascists over hand-wave objections.
too little, too late...this needed to happen january 21st
B-b-b-but Decorum! They take the low road, we take the high! It worked so well last time!
It is starting to feel like Democratic voters are in an abusive relationship with Dem politicians. "I swear I'll be better this time."
are there any left?
Right on time lmfao
after how many cabinet members approved? who have done how much untold damage?
But you see, voting in Marco Rubio 99-0 ensured he'd be a moderating force within the administration instead of some lunatic that would cancel random people's visas left and right.
We should strategically do nothing for the first two months.
Trump already has the main ones he wanted