USA: Series of Senate confirmation hearings for members of the Trump administration

This article was automatically translated from HIBAPRESS, the Arabic version:

Hibapress

The US Senate has just begun confirmation hearings of senior officials in the next administration of Donald Trump, a procedure that will last several weeks.

These hearings constitute an obligation provided for by the American Constitution, which confers this prerogative to the various committees in the upper house of Congress, where the Republicans hold the majority with 53 seats against 47 for the Democrats.

Begun on Tuesday with the hearing of Pete Hegseth, appointed to the post of Secretary of Defense, these hearings continued on Wednesday with hearings of several big names in the Trump administration.

The former Attorney General of Florida, appointed Secretary of Justice, Pam Bondi, opened the ball this Wednesday morning, before giving way to Sean Duffy, appointed head of the Department of Transportation.

John Ratcliffe, former Congressman from Texas responsible for leading the CIA, and Marco Rubio, appointed Secretary of State, also faced questions from senators.

A dozen of Donald Trump’s candidates will have to pass the Senate test throughout this week, while the hearings of the rest of the 22 candidates will be scheduled after the inauguration of the 47th president, scheduled for January 20.

The hearings are the public part of the process of confirming nominees for high office. They are invited, well before these hearings, to meet the senators in a less formal manner.

They must then present documents detailing their professional background and academic training, a sort of detailed CV on the basis of which the Senate committees instruct the FBI to carry out investigations on each of the candidates.

At the end of this process, each committee decides, by vote, whether or not to present the candidate before the Senate. In the event of a presentation, the Senate, in turn, holds a plenary session to vote for the confirmation or rejection of the candidate.

Former Texas Sen. John Tower, who was President George Bush Sr.’s pick for secretary of defense, was the latest nominee to be rejected by the Senate.

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