Trump Gets His First Cabinet Picks

President Trump has the first two members of his Cabinet confirmed: Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

The Senate overwhelmingly voted to approve both men for their posts late Friday afternoon, hours after Trump took the oath of office. But to the consternation of Republicans, the Senate stopped there.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had pushed Democrats to agree to confirm a third member of Trump’s national-security team, Representative Mike Pompeo as CIA director. Democrats, however, refused to allow a vote on Friday, and after a brief negotiation, McConnell agreed to push it back until Monday.

Trump begins his presidency with the most skeletal administration in nearly three decades. The Senate confirmed seven of President George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s nominees on their first day in office in 2001 and 2009, respectively. President Bill Clinton won approval of three nominees on January 20, 1993. The Trump transition got off to a slow start vetting its nominees after the election, and Democrats are demanding more scrutiny and debate for most of his picks.

“If there was ever a group of Cabinet nominees that cry out for rigorous scrutiny, it’s this one,” Senator Charles Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, said on Friday. “The president’s cabinet is a swamp Cabinet, full of billionaires and bankers that have conflicts of interest and ethical lapses as far as the eye can see.”

Republicans accused Democrats of being sore losers after a devastating election result, and they said Trump needed to have his CIA director in place immediately because of the dangerous threats the U.S. faced.

Yet the fight over Pompeo had little to do with the Kansas Republican himself, who is expected to win confirmation easily. Instead, it was an early proxy fight for leverage in Congress during the Trump era: Would the Senate Republican majority allow Democrats to stall nominees it couldn’t defeat outright, and would Democrats be willing to debate late into the night and over the weekend to exert their limited power in the minority?

“This is about whether the Senate is going to be a rubber-stamp and this is about whether the Senate is going to abdicate its responsibility to do oversight,” Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said on the floor. He was objecting to Pompeo’s swift confirmation because he still had questions for the nominee about civil liberties concerns.

There was little opposition to either Mattis or Kelly, both retired generals taking top national-security posts. Mattis won confirmation on a vote of 98-1 after earlier receiving a waiver to lead the Pentagon despite having only retired from active military service four years ago. Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York was the only member to vote no. The vote for Kelly to lead the Department of Homeland Security was 88-11. All those in opposition were Democrats.

The prospects for swift approval for most of Trump’s other nominees are uncertain. Several of the wealthier nominees have had hearings delayed because of the lengthy security and ethics vetting process, and others are facing staunch opposition from Democrats and skepticism from a few key Republicans. The Senate hasn’t formally rejected a Cabinet pick since it voted down President George H.W. Bush’s nomination of John Tower for defense secretary in 1989. But no new president has gotten all of their nominees confirmed in the last 30 years; those that become enmeshed in controversy or partisan brinkmanship (it’s often both) usually withdraw before a vote.

Trump may have more luck with the Senate than his immediate predecessors, and he has Democrats to thank. When they held the majority in 2013, they changed the rules so that executive-branch nominations are no longer subject to the 60-vote threshold for filibusters. That means Trump could conceivably win Senate approval of his entire Cabinet without a single Democratic vote. But even without the filibuster threat, Republicans have just a 52-48 majority, and three GOP defectors could join unified Democrats in thwarting a nominee.

The president has assembled a government-in-waiting that has plenty of money, plenty of military expertise, and plenty of time in politics—but not much experience in the sprawling federal departments they have been tapped to run. Trump has, thus far, chosen five wealthy business leaders, two generals, and four Republican politicians for his Cabinet. All but two are white, all but two are men, and just one—Elaine Chao—has run a federal agency before.