Wait For It

167 days. That’s how long new Attorney General Loretta Lynch waited to be confirmed. After sailing through a confirmation hearing, the extremely qualified lawyer waited longer than the past seven attorney generals combined to have her nomination be voted on by the Senate. Unsurprisingly, she sailed through the vote, with 56 Senators voting for her, and 43 voting against. Ten Republicans joined all the Democrats in confirming Attorney General Lynch at the nation’s first African-American female Attorney General. Only Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) did not vote.

Interestingly, Senator Cruz also abstained from a vote held yesterday on S.B. 178, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. This bill, in contrast to the somewhat close vote to confirm Attorney General Lynch, passed with the other 99 Senators voting in favor of the bill. How did a bill that was previously contentious enough to create an unprecedented delay for a presidential nominee pass with the support of almost every Senator?

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Hyde Your Amendments

There has been gridlock around the anti-human trafficking bill in the Senate, and I promise that is the last traffic-based pun I will make at the expense of human trafficking.

The debate about the anti-human trafficking bill came to a standstill today when the Senate failed to achieve the necessary 60-vote cloture to end debate on the bill, and put the bill up for the real vote. Unlike the cloture votes of years passed, this one was tanked by Democrats, not Republicans.

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