Trump Cabinet confirmation hearings **live commentary thread**

[IceAgeComing]

I believe Linda McMahon is up for confirmation at the beginning of this week (Tuesday?).  I totally don't expect her to be blocked since she's one of the less controversial Trump appointments but it'll be interesting to see whether they bring up anything about her past with the WWE.  Any Democrat worth a damn should bring up the whole independent contractor thing (basically; the vast, vast majority of US-based professional wrestlers aren't technically employers but independent contractors which means  - for those on the indies who work non-exclusive deals this isn't a huge problem and is probably appropriate within the law since they do have  but those who work for the WWE (and on exclusive contracts for other promotions as well; I'm pretty sure at this point that's possibly like a couple of guys in both TNA and Ring of Honor; even TNA's big names now work the indies between TV tapings) its an incredibly dubious categorisation that really should have been struck down years ago: two of the basic criteria that differentiate between an "employee" and an "independent contractor" is whether someone can refuse a booking or take bookings for other promotions which WWE talent aren't allowed to do according to their contracts.  There's a reason that they do this: it basically means that they don't need to do some of the stuff that they'd have to if their wrestlers were considered employees (the big one is providing heath insurance; although they do cover costs for in-ring injuries at the moment but that's something that they could legally drop at any time - I also think that they'd have to cover travel costs directly as well which I don't believe that they do for stops under a certain length) and that saves them money even though its really, really skeevy.  Lots of people who've retired or otherwise moved on from pro wrestling generally all agree that its a big problem but the only legal challenge so far failed on procedural grounds so there's been no progress and I can't see any being made under Trump.  I'm pretty sure that other sports do it as well though, but that doesn't make it any better!

Although part of me expects that we'll get the usual questions that always come up and that have been dealt with before (Steroids, mentioning some of the most distasteful angles from the late 90s, that sort of thing) rather than anything substantive that could reveal anything about Linda McMahon.