Scoop: Schatz expands holds to more than 300 Trump nominees
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Sen. Brian Schatz in Washington on April 1. Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) is expanding his holds on President Trump's nominees to include an additional 50 names — along with a batch of bipartisan foreign affairs bills, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: That brings the total number of Trump nominees Schatz has now ground to a halt to more than 300, intensifying his protest of what he calls the White House's "lawlessness."
- The fresh holds include former Rep. Anthony D'Esposito (R-N.Y.), Trump's pick to be Labor Department inspector general, and Scott Kupor, tapped to lead the Office of Personnel Management.
- The new holds span nominees at more than a dozen Trump administration agencies and departments. Schatz has already placed holds on all State Department nominees.
- Schatz also is blocking nine bipartisan bills that recently cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in protest of what he characterized as the committee's lax oversight of the Trump administration.
The big picture: Schatz and Senate Democrats are building up a backlog of Trump nominees that Senate Republicans will eventually want to confirm.
- They're protesting a range of Trump policies, including his unilateral shuttering of federal agencies and across-the-board tariffs.
- Many administration nominees can be reported out of Senate committees via unanimous consent, but each senator has the ability to object and significantly slow down the process of getting to a final vote.
- "Their lawlessness is escalating and they are intentionally destroying the economy, and so I don't think we should make anything easy going forward," Schatz told Axios.
Zoom in: Schatz's hold on the foreign relations legislation is in protest of what Democrats argue is the committee's lack of oversight of Trump's USAID closure and foreign policy.
- "Until they start complying with the law and until I hear from Marco Rubio in the Foreign Relations Committee, we're just not going to be cooperative," Schatz said.
- Among the bills Schatz is blocking is one that seeks to counter activities by the terrorist group Hezbollah in Latin America and another condemning China's assault on Hong Kong's democracy.
The bottom line: Schatz called on Republican senators, who he said he thinks are privately panicked and frustrated, to publicly push back against the White House.
- "You can't be a senator in private," Schatz said. "If you're going to stand up to the president, people have to see you doing it."
