As US President-Elect Donald Trump continues to announce his selections for Cabinet-level positions this week, the legislators who will be tasked with either confirming or rejecting those appointments have sounded the alarm about at least one of them, and about the future of American democracy in general.
On Wednesday, Trump announced the hugely controversial pick of Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to lead the Department of Justice. Gaetz, who himself is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations involving human trafficking and sexual relations with a minor, is one of Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill and almost certainly would terminate all of the legal cases facing Trump if he is confirmed as Attorney General.
Gaetz, who incidentally is one of the loudest anti-Ukraine voices in the lower chamber, is a former lawyer and also the representative who spearheaded the removal of then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year.
‘That would be the end of the United States Senate’
While the Senate’s confirmations of, for example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) as Secretary of State, or even the anti-Ukraine-aid Tulsi Gabbard (a former Representative from Hawaii) as Director of National Intelligence do not seem at serious risk of failing in the upper chamber, the Gaetz nomination may not garner the 51-vote majority required. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who sits on both the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee and Judiciary Committee, called the pick a “red-alert moment for American democracy.”
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Another possibility is that the Senate could cynically vote to adjourn, thereby allowing Trump to make these appointments without any Congressional oversight.
“That would be the end of the United States Senate,” Murphy told CNN when asked about a recess-appointment scenario. “If the Senate chose to end its power of advice and consent… I don’t know why we would continue to show up for work. That’s not a democracy anymore.”
In addition to Gaetz, Rubio and Gabbard (who, because of reorganizations made over the last decade, would also oversee the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency), the Senate will be reviewing the résumé of Fox News personality Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary.
“The Senate has a critical guardrail role to play,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware), also a member of the body’s Judiciary Committee, explaining that it is not just about the nominee’s qualifications for the role, but also about ethics and character. “The contrast between Senator Rubio and Representative Gaetz could not be more stark in that regard.”
“We are cautiously optimistic” about Biden’s pledge to continue Ukraine aid before the end of his term, and long-rage-strike possibilities, foreign minister says
On Wednesday, foreign minister Andriy Sybiha said that US President Joe Biden will provide “substantial military support to Ukraine before the end of his term,” Sybiha said on Ukrainian television, as reported by state media outlet Ukrinform.
After talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Sybiha said “During my visit to Brussels, I had a number of important meetings and one of the key ones was a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. These were productive negotiations. We discussed the implementation of all agreements reached at the level of leaders when President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington last September. And we have a specific confirmation regarding military aid.”
Sybiha noted that the current administration planned to transfer “significant amounts of military aid to Ukraine in the last weeks of its term.”
“We discussed this in detail with my counterpart. All weapons under Presidential Drawdown Authority as well as payments for all contracts for the production of weapons envisaged by the Ukraine support program. I received such assurances during the meeting with Antony Blinken,” the minister said.
The foreign minister went on to say that he had discussed with Blinken “the issue of long-range strikes on military targets deep inside Russia and Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration,” and felt “confident’ in this regard.
“We are cautiously optimistic here,” Sybiha said.
Foreign Ministry dismisses reports that Ukraine will build its own nuclear bomb if US decreases support
Heorhiy Tykhy, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, posted to social media on Wednesday: “Ukraine is committed to the NPT [Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons]… we do not possess, develop, or intend to acquire nuclear weapons. Ukraine works closely with the IAEA and is fully transparent to its monitoring, which rules out the use of nuclear materials for military purposes.”
The comment was in response to world fears that, in the absence of Washington’s continued support for Kyiv given the Trump victory, Ukraine would continue its nuclear weapons program in defense of its sovereignty.
In May of 1992, Russia, the US, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine signed the Lisbon Protocol committing those countries to adhere to the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states as soon as possible.
However, the terms for transferring the nuclear warheads were not agreed upon immediately, and some Ukrainian officials and parliamentarians discussed the idea of retaining some of the modern Ukrainian-built missiles and older Soviet-built warheads as a result.
But in 1993, both Kyiv and Moscow signed a series of bilateral agreements giving up Ukrainian claims to the nuclear weapons and the Soviet-controlled Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, in return for $2.5 billion of gas and oil debt cancellation and the understanding that Moscow would never invade Ukraine as a result.
Recent events would suggest that the Kremlin will not adhere to such treaties in the future.
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