Donald Trump’s lame obsession with Elon Musk is actually helping Senate Democrats get stuff done.
As the current Senate majority races to approve all of President Joe Biden’s pending judicial nominations during what remains of the lame-duck session, five GOP senators missed confirmation votes on Tuesday—including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty who had been invited to watch a SpaceX starship launch with Trump in Texas.
Even though he’d so obviously gotten in his own way, Trump jumped on Truth Social Tuesday to demand that more senators show up to “hold the line” against Biden’s judicial nominees.
Tensions among Senate Republicans have been at an all-time high as they find themselves momentarily helpless against the Democrats’ lame-duck blitz. Without a majority, playing a numbers game on who shows up is their only hope. Cruz, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio Senator JD Vance were among the several Republicans who missed Senate votes that stretched late into Monday evening.
“I’m a bit frustrated,” West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito told reporters Tuesday. “After last night’s voting extravaganza, I wonder what we are doing.”
“If we don’t show up, we lose,” said North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis at a GOP policy luncheon Tuesday. “I don’t care what the reasons were. We have fewer than 15 scheduled legislative days. You have to show up. Period. End of story. There’s nothing more important.”
After the luncheon, North Dakota Senator John Hoeven stressed that it was important that as many Republicans as possible were present for these votes. “Because, you know, we could win possibly some of those votes if we have all our folks here. Particularly in the circuit court,” he said.
Not everyone is open to that kind of criticism. When a right-wing pundit tried to call out Vance for missing the votes Tuesday, he had a complete meltdown, claiming he was way too busy to bother showing up and that it wouldn’t make a difference if he did. Within an hour, he had deleted the temper tantrum, as it was explicitly at odds with what Trump had demanded.
Vance has since returned to Capitol Hill to drum up support for Trump’s unfavorable Cabinet nominees Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, who are both facing allegations of sexual misconduct. Cruz, however, has remained MIA. He and Indiana Senator Mike Braun were the only two Republican senators absent Wednesday, while their Democratic colleagues confirmed two more judges on Wednesday by 50–48. So it’s plausible that if Cruz and Braun had actually been in attendance, they might’ve been able to block those confirmations, seeing as Vice President Kamala Harris is on vacation and not available to break a tie.
There are currently 45 judicial vacancies and 17 pending nominees.
