TV News LIES

The Senate is set for a late night on Wednesday, as Democrats attempt to shepherd through a number of judicial nominees to fill vacancies weeks before they hand over control of the upper chamber to Republicans in January.

The chamber is set to hold votes that could last into Thursday as part of the push, marking the second night where members will be burning the midnight oil. That judicial offensive kicked off on Monday, when Democrats unexpectedly sought to advance more than a dozen judges, including a highly contentious circuit court nominee.

The U.S. House Committee on Ethics is deadlocked on whether to release its report into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, whose nomination to serve as President-elect Donald Trump's attorney general has been plagued by controversy.

After meeting behind closed doors for about two hours Wednesday, panel Chair Michael Guest, R-Miss., told reporters "there was not an agreement by the committee to release the report."

Ranking Member Susan Wild, D-Pa., said shortly after that there was "no consensus" on the issue, and that the committee will revisit the matter in a meeting on Dec. 5.

"I will say that a vote was taken," Wild said. "As many of you know, this committee is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans — five Dems, five Republicans — which means that in order to affirmatively move something forward, somebody has to cross party lines and vote with the other side ... that did not happen in today's vote."

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Senate Republicans are rejecting a proposal floated by some advisers to President-elect Trump to take the job of conducting background checks for high-level nominees away from the FBI and give it to private investigators.

Doing so could make it easier for some nominees to win Senate confirmation, but GOP senators say the FBI should retain its leading role in conducting background checks. They argue its agents have access to criminal information that private investigators simply can’t match.

And while many Trump allies don’t trust the FBI, many GOP senators think the agency sets the gold standard for professionalism and credibility in law enforcement.

The FBI also leads the nation’s domestic counterespionage efforts, serving as the lead agency for investigating and preventing foreign intelligence gathering activities in the United States. Republican senators think that role puts it in a good position to vet nominees who would have access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets.

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Rep.-elect Sarah McBride said a resolution from Rep. Nancy Mace to ban transgender women from women’s bathrooms in the Capitol was a distraction in a Monday statement.

“This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing,” McBride, a Delaware Democrat who is set to become the first openly transgender member of Congress, said.

Discussion on Donald Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who had been accused of sexual misconduct, for US attorney general continued on Sunday, with Republican senator Markwayne Mullin calling for an unreleased ethics report to be released to the Senate.

Mullin told NBC’s Meet the Press that the Senate, which will oversee Gaetz’s confirmation hearings to become attorney general, “should have access to that” but declined to say if it should be released publicly.

Gaetz resigned from his seat in Congress on Wednesday soon after the president-elect made his controversial pick, frustrating plans by a congressional ethics panel to release a review of claims against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct and illegal drug use. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.

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