Biden Cabinet Confirmation Live Thread ***hearings, votes, etc.***

[Not Me, Us]

This morning, C-SPAN said that Yellen and Blinken could be voted on today, but McConnell in his morning remarks said that Blinken would be voted on next week. Any news on Yellen and/or Blinken?

Yellen was voted (unanimously) out of committee earlier today, so there are no obstacles to confirming her today.

It's been reported that there are a few holds against Blinken's nomination in committee at the moment, which would prevent them from using unanimous consent to discharge from the committee and vote immediately. If the holds aren't lifted, they'll have to wait for the Foreign Affairs committee to vote at their next regular meeting (which is on Monday).

Risch (chair of committee) said he was "working on" getting the holds lifted, but Menendez (lead Dem) said he expected it would only happen on Monday.

Why is Risch still committee chair? Dems have the majority.

[Not Me, Us]

Why is Mayorkas so controversial compared to Biden's other nominees?

[Not Me, Us]

Which Cabinet nominees are left to be confirmed?
-Interior, Labor, HHS
-Trade Rep, SBA, Science Director
-still need to nominate someone new for OMB

Anyone else?

That's it for the Cabinet and Cabinet-level posts, yes.

Still plenty of non-cabinet people of varying levels of importance, of course.

Jumping off of this, Shalanda Young will technically immediately take the reins at OMB as Acting Director upon her impending confirmation as Deputy Director, which bodes well for her potential selection to replace Tanden as the nominee for the permanent Director's job.

Yeah. Bumping her up from Acting and Deputy into fully having the job would be easy enough, if they go that route.

There's a lot of other big positions I'm interested in. The military secretaries, CIA Director and FEMA director all used to be cabinet level and are quite important; various other DoD and DHS undersecretaries and agency directors, who oversee vast amounts of money and personnel; the OPM director; the vacant seat on the Federal Trade Commission; various others I'm forgetting.

I'm also interested to see who gets important ambassadorships.

[Not Me, Us]

Hawley is going to be the Gillibrand of 2024 at this rate, voting against almost all of Biden's Cabinet picks.

I'm surprised he voted for any, iirc Gillibrand voted against all of Trump's nominees.

[Not Me, Us]

The Vice President, Trade Rep, and Surgeon General are all Asian-American. All three are high-level positions in the US government. Just because they don't have Secretary in their title doesn't mean they aren't important. This argument is just dumb, and I'm glad Duckworth and Hirono are backing down.

[Not Me, Us]

Not technically Cabinet or Cabinet-level but a relatively big name for a position you might not otherwise give a 2nd glance:

https://twitter.com/TB_Times/status/1383239754242691079

Imagine how many Floridians would still be alive right now if the morons in the FL Democratic Party had nominated her instead of Gillum. What could have been.

She would have lost too. If a moderate like Nelson couldn't win as an incumbent, no Democrat was winning a major statewide race that year.

[Not Me, Us]

Somewhat unrelated but, maybe we won't see a SCOTUS confirmation battle

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1394247477650468864

Not necessarily: with just 5 months to go 'til OT2021, Sotomayor's still hired only 2 clerks, even though she was fully hired up for OT2020 by Jan. 2020 (i.e., at least 9 months beforehand), & even though 2 clerks is more than the 1 that a retired justice is allotted, only hiring 2 by now is still a plausible indicator that she's at least considering retirement this year, given that were she to do so, she'd just work with 1 of the clerks this fall while either deferring the other to OT2022 (i.e., what Kennedy did with his OT2018 clerks) or transferring them over to either Breyer or Kagan's chambers, so a (nevertheless surprising) Sotomayor retirement this year followed by a Breyer retirement next summer still can't be ruled out as of yet.

I was about to post a smartass reply along the lines of "why would she retire so soon" thinking she wasn't that old, but she is a bit older than I thought. I still don't think she's going to retire yet, she still has time left.

Yeah, & she's at a heightened medical risk compared to your avg. 66-year-old justice due to the pre-existing condition from which she suffers (type 1 diabetes), so she might not be as likely to make it to ~82/83 as somebody like Breyer was, & based on how the dynamics of presidential/Senate control play out after the midterms, that could mean that this summer (or next) could very well be her last chance to retire with a Democratic president capable of nominating a liberal replacement who could be confirmed by a Democratic Senate. Otherwise, if the Democrats lose the Senate next fall, then after that, she could be risking being trapped on the Court for who knows how long, just like Marshall, Brennan, & RBG were: wanting to retire but ideologically unable to because there's either a Republican president or a Democratic president who can't get a liberal nominee confirmed with a Republican Senate, & we know how well trying to wait worked for them.

Speaking as a type one diabetic, as long as she keeps her blood sugar in check, which I'm assuming she does, there's no reason why she couldn't live live as long or longer than a non-diabetic.