JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/NOMINATIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump on Friday [1-5-18] said he would resubmit more than 20 judicial nominees to the Senate for confirmation, including his picks for federal judge positions in Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana—states the White House says ‘are suffering from judicial emergencies.’
The judge picks were among nearly 100 nominees that Congress returned to the White House late last year. At the end of a calendar year, the Senate must unanimously agree to roll over an unconfirmed nominee to the next year. If any senator objects, the nominee is returned to the White House and must be resubmitted for confirmation.
Lawmakers’ decision to return the nominees didn’t necessarily mean their confirmation prospects are in trouble, but it could mean a delay in filling the already historically high number of vacancies in the federal government…
The nominees returned to the White House include several prominent ones, including Health and Human Services secretary nominee Alex Azar, Federal Reserve chairman nominee Jerome Powell and nearly a dozen State Department picks.
Many of these are expected to be renominated and confirmed.
But the list also includes several nominees who have faced contentious confirmation hearings and criticism from Democrats, among them: Kathleen Hartnett White, Mr. Trump’s choice to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality who was criticized by Democrats for describing global warming as a ‘kind of paganism’; K.T. McFarland, who was tapped to serve as U.S. ambassador to Singapore and has come under scrutiny in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Trump associates’ ties to Russia; and Eric Dreiband, the nominee to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division, who has faced scrutiny from Democrats for defending big business from discrimination lawsuits…
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a question about whether it would resubmit the rest of the nominees returned by the Senate.”
-Rebecca Ballhausm, “Trump Will Resubmit Judicial Nominees for Senate Approval,” The Wall Street Journal online, Jan. 5, 2018 07:44pm