Senator Tommy Tuberville is willing to do anything he can to make Donald Trump’s transition easier, even if it means completely forgoing one of the most important parts of his job.
Tuberville told reporters from CNN Wednesday that the Senate didn’t need to complete the vetting processes for Cabinet confirmations because Trump already did such a great job of that, even using the controversial Pete Hegseth as an example. Tuberville went so far as to suggest that Democrats who were merely doing their research were actually attacking nominees.
“Who are we to say that [the Senate is] a better vetter and picker of people than Donald Trump?” Tuberville asked CNN’s Manu Raju.
“Advise and consent, that’s your job,” Raju correctly replied, referring to the power vested in the Senate to approve treaties and appointments. Tuberville replied that that was more the Democrats’ job.
“Donald Trump did all the vetting they needed to do on Pete Hegseth,” Tuberville continued. I just can’t believe we even have people on our side that are saying, ‘Well I’ve got to look at this, gotta look at that.’ What they’re doing is throwing rocks at Donald Trump.”
Tommy Tuberville tells CNN that he doesn't think Republican senators should really vet Trump's nominees at all because Trump did it for them pic.twitter.com/L4CmNCfRUW
Numerous Republican senators have expressed discomfort over Hegseth, a Christian nationalist accused of rape, assault, and misconduct who is up for defense secretary.
It’s unsurprising that the same senator who couldn’t name the three branches of government has no qualms about shirking the basic constitutional responsibility of his position. If these confirmations are a MAGA loyalty test, Republicans like Tuberville are passing with flying colors.
Republicans in Congress are taking further steps to ignore Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and start referring to the territory by Israel’s name “Judea and Samaria.”
Senator Tom Cotton proposed a Senate bill Thursday that would eliminate federal use of the term “West Bank,” removing it from all official U.S. government documents. His measure matches a bill that was filed in the House in February by Republican Representatives Claudia Tenney, Randy Weber, and Anthony D’Esposito.
Cotton claims that Judea and Samaria is the historically accurate name for the territory, and asserts Israel’s claims over what is internationally recognized as occupied territory.
“The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria goes back thousands of years. The U.S. should stop using the politically charged term West Bank to refer to the biblical heartland of Israel,” Cotton said in a statement.
“Politically charged” is quite the exaggeration from Cotton. The International Court of Justice ruled in July that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law, calling into question their terminology for the territory. Since Israel began its occupation of Palestine in 1967 following the Six-Day War, Israel has built 160 settlements that house close to 700,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Republican-sponsored bills seem to confirm speculation that Israel plans to annex the West Bank with U.S. support. Israel has embarked on a military campaign in the territory, killing nearly 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since 2022. Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinian residents in addition to Israeli military raids, and those assaults have increased since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Prior to Israel’s war on Gaza over the past year, which has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, 2023 was considered the deadliest year ever for Palestinian children, according to human rights groups, and that was due to violence in the West Bank. Republican pro-Israel megadonor Miriam Adelson reportedly donated more than $100 million to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign so that the president-elect would recognize Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
The Adelson family has long donated to Republicans, and Cotton has been a pro-Israel hawk for many years. The Arkansas senator is poised to take over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship with his colleague Marco Rubio’s nomination for secretary of state. With Trump making no secret of his support for Israel, coupled with this proposed bill by Cotton, U.S. policy for the next four years appears to be unconditional support for Israel’s efforts to squash Palestinian self-determination.
Donald Trump is willing to go to absurd, cruel lengths to accomplish his sweeping deportation goals—even if it means sending immigrants back to random countries.
Trump and his circle have already begun a list of countries to deport immigrants to if their home countries refuse to accept them, including Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Panama, and Grenada, among others, NBC reported Thursday.
This means that thousands of people could be permanently displaced if the president-elect is able to go through with his “largest deportation operation in American history,” leaving immigrants in unfamiliar countries with uncertain futures. Trump also wants Mexico to accept non-Mexican........