Three months ago, Senate Republicans executed a tactical maneuver known as the “nuclear option,” which allows the majority to unilaterally change how the institution functions. In September, that meant clearing the way for the majority to approve White House nominees in giant blocs, leaving the Senate minority effectively powerless to stop them.
With this in mind, as members prepared to exit Capitol Hill and begin a holiday break, the Senate GOP majority linked arms and confirmed 97 of Donald Trump’s nominees to serve in his administration in one fell swoop Thursday night.
It’s obviously a long list, and I won’t be able to highlight each of the confirmations individually, but one of the president’s picks stands out as especially notable. Newsday reported:
The U.S. Senate has confirmed former Long Island GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito to be the Department of Labor’s top internal watchdog.
His nomination was approved Thursday night. … D’Esposito, 43, has often expressed his loyalty to Trump and was nominated by the president to the Labor Department Inspector General job in March.
When Trump first tapped D’Esposito for the inspector general job, Politico reported that the New York Republican might be an “awkward fit” for the position, and it’s worth appreciating why.
The New York Republican arrived on Capitol Hill in early 2023, and it didn’t take long for the then-congressman to run into some trouble. Indeed, The New York Times reported in September 2024 that D’Esposito hired his fiancée’s daughter to work as a special assistant in his district office, paying her $3,800 a month in taxpayer money.
Around the same time, the GOP congressman also reportedly added to his official payroll a woman with whom he was having an affair, generating a series of questions about the legal and ethical lines he apparently crossed.
The Times’ report, which was not independently verified by MS NOW, added that his fiancée eventually found out about the affair and briefly broke up with him, at which point the New York Republican stopped paying both women.
D’Esposito didn’t explicitly deny the accuracy of the reporting, though he did issue a statement that read in part, “My personal life has never interfered with my ability to deliver results for New York’s 4th District, and I have upheld the highest ethical standards of personal conduct.”
This was not persuasive to his constituents: D’Esposito, after having served just one term, narrowly lost his re-election bid in his competitive Long Island district last year, despite what was generally a good year for GOP candidates nationwide. Roughly six months later, Trump — who has a curious habit of finding jobs for Republicans whom voters have rejected — decided that D’Esposito should be the inspector general at the Department of Labor, where he’ll be expected to investigate ethical lapses, despite his own alleged ethical lapses. GOP senators had plenty of opportunities to tell the White House that this nomination was simply too absurd to take seriously, but they did the opposite: Every member of the Senate Republican conference, including the so-called “moderates,” voted to confirm him as part of their end-of-year bloc. There is, however, some question as to just how long D’Esposito will remain in his new job: The former GOP congressman has left open the possibility of running for his old seat in the 2026 midterm elections, despite the scandals that contributed to his defeat last fall. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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