More names are trickling out as to possible Cabinet members of Donald Trump’s second administration, and they’re as bad, if not worse, than his picks the first time around.
While it might seem like the Senate could serve as a guardrail here, refusing to confirm the most egregiously behaved and least capable of Trump’s selections, there are a few problems with hoping for that particular check and balance.
First, it only takes a simple majority in the Senate to confirm a Cabinet member—or any other of the 1,200 positions that need Senate confirmation—and the GOP holds the Senate, with insurrectionist enthusiasts like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley leading the way.
Next, and a far bigger problem, is a loophole that will let Trump install whoever he wants, without even needing a Senate vote. Expect Trump to use this loophole—naming “acting” Cabinet members rather than permanent ones—a lot in the coming days.
In a functioning democracy, confirming Cabinet secretaries and other high-level appointees should be a sleepy affair. You might not have loved, say, Margaret Spellings as the secretary of the Department of Education under George W. Bush, but at least she was a person with a background in actual education policy. Was she a fan of vouchers? Sure. Was she a weirdo bigot about same-sex parents? Indeed!
Terrible as these ideas are, though, they’re longtime GOP positions, and it wasn’t surprising that Bush tapped Spellings, and it also wasn’t surprising that Spellings was confirmed by voice vote.
In contrast, Trump’s second term picks are being considered for one reason: their willingness to help Trump eliminate the Department of Education.
To that end, Trump has floated two names for Education secretary: Vivek Ramaswamy, a one-time 2024 campaign rival, and former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin.
Lee Zeldin in June 2022.
Ramaswamy’s background in education consists entirely of campaigning on a pledge to close the Department of Education. Zeldin’s résumé is no better. His sole background in education seems to be getting a bill passed that let parents opt out of Common Core standards, a right-wing bugaboo from 20 years ago.
Even GOP members of the Senate should reject choices like these, but they won’t. Right now, the people jockeying to replace Mitch McConnell as Republican leader are to the right of him and have spent the last several years sucking up to Trump—Rick Scott, anyone?—so the chance the Senate would not back a Trump nominee seems slim.
But even if Democrats could peel off a few Republican votes and block a confirmation, they may never get the chance. Trump could just name one of these nightmares as an “acting” head of the department, skipping over the Senate entirely.
It was a favorite move during Trump’s first administration and likely a necessary one since, out of the gate, Trump’s first-term Cabinet selections got more “no” votes than any other Cabinet in history.
Likely because of this and because of his desire to exert pressure and control over Cabinet members, which Trump framed as giving him “more flexibility” and that it was “easier to make moves” with acting Cabinet members. The Federal Vacancy Reform Act sets a time limit of 210 days for all acting appointments.
But even that loophole has, well, an additional loophole. If the president nominates someone to fill the slot permanently through the required Senate confirmation, the acting position can be extended regardless of whether the Senate acts on it.
Trump also switched out his acting secretaries to get around the 210-day limit. Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security had three acting secretaries, so DHS was under the control of acting personnel for 440 days total. By early 2020, there had been 22 acting officials in Cabinet secretary and Cabinet-level roles that also require confirmation. Those officials served for a combined 2,700 days, which the Washington Post worked out meant that about 1 of every 9 days across those jobs.
Trump didn’t just name acting personnel to exert greater control over them or be able to more easily replace them. He also used it as a way to get around Senate opposition to a confirmation. When it became clear that Ken Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia and a hard-liner on immigration, wouldn’t get confirmed as head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services because Senate Republicans hated him for criticizing them and backing more conservative challengers, Trump simply named Cuccinelli to an acting role.
Ken Cuccinelli testifies during a Senate hearing in Sept. 2020.
This slipshod manner of doing things has a side effect that many people would consider a bug, but for Trump, it’s a feature: It creates chaos in executive agencies.
By the end of Trump’s term, 39 key positions in the 15 Cabinet departments were never filled at all, and 131 positions were vacant. This combination of unfilled key positions, an inexperienced ideologue in the acting top role, and Trump’s goal of purging the federal workforce of longtime non-partisan employees so they can be replaced with loyalists, will grind agencies to a halt.
But that’s exactly what conservatives want. They hate agencies because agencies have a nasty habit of creating regulations on things like limiting pollution or trying to make things better for trans kids.
Gutting the administrative state means Trump will never have to deal with pesky experts again. Instead, we could experience conspiracy theorist and all-around weirdo Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running the FDA. If Trump wants it that way, it’s likely impossible to stop him, even if Republican senators came together to block someone who thinks wi-fi causes cancer, Trump can just go around them.
It’s definitely time to expect the absolute worst.
Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·