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Donald Trump’s team has a message for Senate Democrats threatening to slow-walk their nominees: Give the president-elect’s Cabinet picks the same treatment extended to President Obama’s. Top transition officials, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., are citing a potential double standard as some Democratic lawmakers seek a delay in advance of a packed schedule of confirmation hearings. Eight years ago, the Senate confirmed seven Cabinet-level nominees the day of Obama’s inauguration, including top picks like Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security secretary. Hillary Clinton was confirmed as secretary of state the following day.

Last week was a bit interesting from the Senate Democrat side. The olive branch that was offered by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the new Senate Minority Leader, was blunt and straightforward to the incoming Trump White House. WeÂ’ll only work with you if you abandon the Republicans and adhere to 100 percent of what we want to do (via Real Clear Politics/CNN): CHUCK SCHUMER: I said, Mr. President-elect, you went after both the Democratic and Republican establishments when you ran. You were an anti-establishment change candidate. But by your cabinet picks and your early pronouncements, you seem to be embracing...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Saturday called for the Senate to not hold confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks until after the completion of an ethics screening. "Cabinet officials must put our country's interests before their own. No [confirmation] hearings should be held until we’re certain that’s the case," the Massachusetts Democrat tweeted. [Snip] "This is ridiculous," Warren tweeted, "[Trump's nominees] can’t drag their feet on ethics paperwork while their Senate friends try to run out the clock."

WASHINGTON — Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham pushed Sunday for greater sanctions against Russia for trying to influence the U.S. election and said President-elect Donald Trump is in danger of being in conflict with congressional Republicans if he doesn't get tougher on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two senators, in a joint interview on Meet the Press, also said the U.S. intelligence community's evidence of Russian interference during the American presidential campaign is overwhelming, and that Trump should accept those findings. "You can't go on with your life as a democracy when a foreign entity is trying to...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer played the tough guy last week, vowing to leave a vacancy on the nation’s highest court unless President-elect Donald Trump taps a judge he and his fellow Democrats like. But trash-talk is easy. “If [Trump and his staff] don’t appoint someone who’s really good,” Schumer huffed, “we’re going to oppose them tooth and nail.”

The rules set by Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, schedule Sessions' hearings for two days, with one day mostly devoted to testimony from Sessions and the second day featuring testimony from nine witnesses -- five called by Republicans and four called by Democrats. The witness lists are still being finalized; a Judiciary Committee spokeswoman told AL.com that the names should be made public on Monday, a day before the hearing. After the two days of testimony, the 16-member committee will then vote whether to send Sessions' nomination to the full Senate, where...

The Office of Government Ethics is raising alarm over the pace of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's nominees, saying Saturday that they have yet to receive required financial disclosures for some picks set to come before Congress next week. In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released Saturday, OGE Director Walter Shaub wrote that "the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me" and that the current schedule "has created undue pressure on OGE's staff and agency ethics officials...

The Senate narrowly rejected Democrats' attempts to force Republicans to get 60 votes to repeal Obamacare rather than a simple majority. The Senate voted 52-48 along party lines to reject an amendment by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and other Democrats to a budget resolution bill that is the first step toward repealing Obamacare.

Dems digging the hole deeper Democrats don’t understand what happened in the 2016 election. They don’t know why they lost and they have no concept of how badly they were beaten. I’ve made this point a hundred times. We see their denial in their post-election defiance, their doubling-down on people like Pelosi, and the bitter name-calling aimed at anyone who didn’t support Hillary Clinton. They cling to popular vote totals, buoyed by left-wing superstates New York and California, so they can whistle past their electoral graveyard and their brutal 2018 map.

Or else what? Chuck Schumer’s leverage to obstruct the next nominee to the Supreme Court was almost as incoherent as his demand for a “mainstream” nominee. Appearing on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show last night, Schumer followed that demand up with an acknowledgment that Democrats wouldn’t consider any nominee mainstream if he or she had full Republican support. That leaves us with … what, exactly? Knee-jerk obstructionism:

The widows mite a Pence to you, But soon shall rise from where now it is viewed, Humility about to rise, Where wisdom lives and no demise, So watch My choice begin to show, When "others" preach a Trump to grow, Truly this Pence shall be my choice , A man of God that speaks only My voice, Luke 21:1-4Tree of Life Version Teaching in the Temple 21 Then Yeshua looked up and saw the rich dropping their gifts into the treasury box. 2 He also saw a poor widow dropping in two small copper coins. [a] 3 And He...

As the new Congress convenes, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demonstrates that for some reason being a democrat leader in Congress has the unfortunate prerequisite of being an idiot. A volcano of bombast picking up right where Harry Reid left, Schumer spit out his vision of the unending obstructionism he plans forr the GP and Donald Trump. He promised to block any Trump nominee for the Supreme Court. “It’s hard for me to imagine a nominee that Donald Trump would choose that would get Republican support that we could support,” Schumer said in an interview Tuesday night on MSNBC’s “The Rachel...

President-elect Donald Trump’s broadside against the intelligence community is dividing Capitol Hill Republicans, with some ready to pounce on Trump’s skepticism that Russia interfered with the U.S. elections and others urging a more cautious approach. The resulting schism could widen as Congress begins probing the CIA’s charges that Russia intervened in the November elections in an attempt to help Trump, potentially becoming one of the first significant intraparty breaches of the Trump presidency. U.S. critics of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, such as Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), want to go full-bore on holding Russia to account...

The GOP Congress and Senate needs to be made to understand in the most unmistakable ways we can, that their feet are going to be held to the fire, through our unceasing scrutiny and reaction to any show of weakness or intimidation on their part.

During an interview aired on Tuesday’s edition of CNN’s “The Lead,” Senate Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated of President-Elect Donald Trump, “The only way we’re going to work with him is if he moves completely in our direction and abandons his Republican colleagues.” Schumer said, “The only way we’re going to work with him is if he moves completely in our direction and abandons his Republican colleagues...."

As we face the new year and the realities of politics in a post-Obama world, the Democrats understandably feel the need to act as if some things are still normal. That is, even if they suspect that Donald Trump and the Republicans will soon turn the U.S. into a one-party state in all but name, the Democrats need to avoid admitting as much—to themselves or anyone else—to prevent their fears from become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This means that, in the hope of being able to win elections in the future, Democrats are trying to think through the various reasons that...

The new Congress was sworn in on Tuesday, and the first thing it did was prepare to repeal Obamacare. Senate Budget Committee Chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) introduced a budget resolution Tuesday that includes "reconciliation instructions" that enable Congress to repeal Obamacare with a simple Senate majority. Passing a budget resolution that includes those instructions will mean that the legislation can pass through the budget reconciliation process, in which bills cannot be filibustered. That means Republicans will only need 50 of their 52 members in the Senate, and a bare majority in the House, to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) are pushing for an amendment to the Constitution to place term limits on lawmakers, arguing the move will help overhaul Washington. "The American people resoundingly agreed on Election Day, and President-elect Donald Trump has committed to putting government back to work for the American people," Cruz said in a statement on Tuesday. "It is well past time to put an end to the cronyism and deceit that has transformed Washington into a graveyard of good intentions.” Under an amendment the two GOP lawmakers filed on Tuesday, House members would be allowed...

I am not upset by this, and I applaud the move.“If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.” – Psalm 137:5-6 NIVIn the wake of President Obama’s breathtaking betrayal of Israel, in refusing to veto a U.N. resolution, aimed at making Israel’s settlements along the West Bank and in east Jerusalem illegal, this is a positive move in the right direction.GOP Senators Marco Rubio (Florida), Ted Cruz (Texas), and Dean Heller...

That didn’t take long. Before the new members could even be sworn in, Senate Republicans revealed the parliamentary language that congressional Republicans will use to dismantle Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act, without fear of a filibuster by Democrats in the coming months.