At a July 30 business meeting, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee approved four additional nominees for Department of Transportation posts under President Trump.

WIth the Republican majority solidly behind each of the nominees, the only real drama was waiting for panel ranking minoiryt member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) to announce how she would vote (and urge Democrats how to vote likewise). Her statement:

“Paul Roberti to be Administrator of Pipeline and Hazardous Materials [Safety]. I’ll also be supporting him. I am concerned about the steep decline in pipeline enforcement cases thus far in the Trump Administration, but I believe Mr. Roberti is qualified to lead the agency and will work hard to reverse this alarming trend – specifically this issue of how foreign actors attack our pipeline system, and what we need to do to work with other agencies to strengthen the resiliency of that system.

“Other people though — I will not be supporting Mr. Taylor [Jordan] to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation [and Prediction]. I have serious concerns about his views on climate and a variety of activities in the private sector. I do not plan to support Derek Barrs…nominated as the Administrator of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The trucking industry is essential, but it must be operated safely, and we’ve seen a significant decline in enforcement actions. And we had a chance to talk about this, but I did not – was not satisfied with his answers.

“Mr. [Jonathan] Morrison to be NHTSA Administrator again, same, same issues. We want to see an Administrator that is going to enforce and make sure that the laws are upheld. And Mr. [Gregory] Zerzan, I’m concerned that in the vacuum left [for] the Deputy Secretary, Mr. Bradbury, the agenda of the Trump administration [is] trying to get rid of aviation regulations when we have lots of aviation problems and we need to have good oversight.

“Finally, Mr. [MIchael] Rutherford to be Assistant Secretary of Transportation for multimodal.  While we had great conversation here in the Committee about working for the priorities of Mega, and freight and various things, in the QFRs, he said he no longer supported increasing investments in these programs, and so I’m not going to support his nomination.”

Cantwell herself moved the Roberti nomination (PHMSA) and it passed the committee, 22 to 6, with the “no” votes being Democratic Senators Markey (MA), Luhan (NM), Hickenlooper (CO), Kim (NJ)< Blunt Rochester (DE), and Schatz (HI). And the nomination of Jonathan Morrison to head NHTSA gained the support of auto-industry Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) and thus passed on a 16 to 12 vote. The other three - Gregory Zerzan to be DOT General Counsel, Jonathan Barrs to run FMCSA, andMichael Rutherford to be Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Multimodal Freight - were approved by party-line votes of 15 to 13. The nomination of Seval Oz to be Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology was postponed to another day. In addition, President Trump sent another nominee up late on July 30: Daniel Edwards to be Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Aviation and International Affairs. Edwasds was a 23-year Air Force and Air Force Reserves pilot (KC-10) and commercial pilot (DC-10 and Boeign 757/767) before getting involved in a vareity of aircraft maintenance and airfield infrastructure businesses. The DOT website says that Edwards has been Acting Assistant Secretary for some time, but presumably, he will need to cease doing so, because section 3345(B)(1) of title 5, United States Code (the Vacancies Reform Act) states very clearly that “…a person may not serve as an acting officer for an office under this section, if–…(B) the President submits a nomination of such person to the Senate for appointment to such office.”

The Zerzan, Roberti, Morrison, Barrs and Rutherford nominations were then placed on the Executive Calendar and joined a growing logjam of nominees trying to get approved by the Senate before the August recess. It now looks like the recess will already be delayed by at least one day – last night, the Majority Leader filed cloture on ten more nominees and all those cloture votes will ripen on Saturday. The tenth of those was Marcus Molinari to run the Federal Transit Administration.

Speaking of that nomination logjam: this week, I saw a stat on X (Twitter) that sounded too absurd to be real, so I double-checked it. I went on Congress.gov and clicked the Nominations link, then isolated for civilian nominations confirmed in the current 119^th Congress (and as of this morning, there had been 120 of those confirmations of Trump second term appointees).

Every single one was confirmed by the Senate by a roll call vote. There has not been a single solitary nominee confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent.

This is a tremendous variance from historical norms. In the last Congress, the Senate confirmed a total of 358 nominees, and 135 of those (38 percent) went by voice. Prior to 2017 the percentage of voice votes was much higher than that.

(However, one of the names that was cleared by voice during the last Congress jumped out at me – Alvin Brown was confirmed to the National Transportation Safety Board by voice vote on March 8, 2024. President Trump then fired him less than halfway through his term, without giving a reason, prompting a lawsuit from Brown. Writ large, that kind of thing probably explains why Democrats are no longer allowing any Trump nominations to move except by the cumbersome cloture-waiting period-roll call vote process.)

DOT Nominees Reported from Committee and Pending on the Executive Calendar:

• Cal. No. 63 Marcus Molinaro, to be FTA Administrator (April 3)
• Cal. No. 158 David Fink, to be FRA Administrator (May 21)
• Cal. No. 177 Sean McMasters, to be FHWA Administrator (June 11)
• Cal. No. 344 Paul Roberti, to be PHMSA Administrator (July 30)
• Cal. No. 346 Jonathan Morrison, to be NHTSA Administrator (July 30)
• Cal. No. 347 Derek Barrs to be FMCSA Administrator (July 30)
• Cal. No. 348 Michael Rutherford to be Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Multimodal Freight (July 30)
• Cal. No. 349 Gregory Zerzan to be General Counsel of the Department of Transportation (July 30)