| Good morning, Early Birds. Former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld turns 78 today. Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick turns 67 today. No other former Massachusetts governor will celebrate a birthday until November, when Michael Dukakis will turn 90. Tips: earlytips@washpost.com. Was this forwarded to you? Sign up here. Thanks for waking up with us. In today's edition … What we're watching: Ron DeSantis's economic speech … All eyes on Atlanta … but first … | | |  | On the Hill | | Democrats bemoan "a cancer spreading" in the Senate |  The holds have stymied Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) from quickly confirming the nominees. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) | | | Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who huddled on the Senate floor last Tuesday with Sens. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), was working to gain support to force a vote to confirm Gen. Eric Smith to be commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. Smith is one of the 301 military positions that Tuberville has blocked over the Defense Department's abortion policy. Tuberville has met with Smith and supports his confirmation, according to an aide to Tuberville. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) urged Sullivan not to move ahead, according to three people familiar with the interaction, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to divulge private conversations. The maneuver Sullivan proposed — known as a cloture petition — would set a precedent that would be abused by Democrats when they are in the minority, McConnell warned, adding that it's possible that Republicans could take back the Senate in next year's midterm elections. (Right now cloture petitions are used rarely by the minority party and almost never by rank-and-file members such as Sullivan.) | | Sullivan backed down. (McConnell declined to comment; Sullivan didn't provide a comment.) | Growing tensions over nominations | | Sullivan's effort came as tension mounts over the hundreds of nominees throughout government waiting to be confirmed. It's not just Tuberville who is blocking swift confirmation of nominees. At least a half-dozen senators are preventing nominees for posts across the administration — including but not limited to the Justice Department, State Department, Commerce Department, Defense Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency — from being confirmed. Senators are holding up the process for various reasons. Sometimes they have to do with the nominee, but more often they don't. "Hopefully it forces people to come to the table and be responsive," said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who is holding up all Energy Department nominees until he gets an action plan from the Biden administration on cleaning up radioactive waste in St. Louis. Critics acknowledge that blocking nominees is a useful tactic to cut a deal, but they warn that the high number of holds from such a large number of senators threatens the art of the deal. | - "There is a cancer spreading in the United States Senate," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. "The Senate has never abused this power in this way prior to this Republican minority, and it's a sign of how fundamentally broken our rules are."
| | Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) is holding up two U.S. attorneys — and says he will also hold up future Justice Department nominees — until Attorney General Merrick Garland "promises to do his job and stop going after his political opponents." | | Vance is also holding up State Department nominees, including 22 ambassadors, until he confirms they won't implement "woke" policies. He sent a questionnaire to all ambassador nominees, Politico's Joe Gould and Nahal Toosi reported last week. "We're asking people questions, we're trying to understand statements they've made, things that they've done," Vance told us on Thursday. "And if we think their answers are satisfactory, then we'll release the hold. And if we don't, we don't." Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard R. Verma said that not confirming the ambassadors poses a national security threat. | - "In these 22 posts that will remain open, our adversaries have not ceded the field — they are in these capitals promoting a very different and often dangerous vision for our world," Verma told The Early in a statement. "They don't do politics, and we would urge the Senate to allow them, and in many cases their families too, to serve their country abroad."
| | The Senate confirmed 16 ambassadors before they left town for five weeks on Thursday after Verma reached a deal with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for Paul to remove his holds. Paul tweeted that he released his holds because the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development "agreed to release documents" on research conducted in at the Wuhan lab in China. | | Graham said it is senators' prerogative on when and if they place holds, but he said there is fallout from the move. "It's certainly having an effect on the ability to have a presence in places," Graham said. "It is definitely having an effect." Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has a hold on a Veterans Affairs deputy secretary nominee, Tanya J. Bradsher. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) is holding up Commerce Department nominees that move through the Commerce Committee, on which he is a ranking Republican. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won't hold a confirmation hearing on Monica Bertagnolli to lead the National Institutes of Health and pledges to block all health nominees until President Biden delivers him a "comprehensive" plan to reduce drug costs. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) has pledged to vote against any nominees for Environmental Protection Agency positions until the administration agrees to "halt their government overreach" on a "radical climate agenda." Republican say Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) can bring up each nomination for a vote to overcome a senator's hold, but Democrats say that would paralyze the floor and probably eat up every hour the Senate is in session through the end of the year. Schumer has been prioritizing judicial nominations. September is likely to be filled with debate on spending bills. | | The average number of days a nominee must wait for Senate confirmation has doubled over the past two decades, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that tracks nominations. President George W. Bush's nominees (excluding judges, U.S. attorneys and U.S. marshals) waited about 80 days on average at this point in his presidency. President Barack Obama's waited about 96 days and President Donald Trump's waited about 138 days. | - Biden's have waited 166 days on average.
| | The slowdown, even as the filibuster for most nominees were eliminated 2013, has resulted in the confirmation of just 649 of Biden's nominees as of July 23. That's fewer than the 841 nominees confirmed at this point in Bush's presidency or the 757 confirmed at this point in Obama's, although more than the 566 confirmed at this point in the Trump administration. "This body's going to be majoritarian institution pretty soon," Murphy said. "The filibuster is going to disappear, and this will be part of the story as to why we get rid of it." | | |  | What we're watching | | | In his ongoing campaign reset that includes discussing issues beyond culture-war politics, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will deliver a "Declaration of Economic Independence" speech on the economy today in New Hampshire. His remarks are expected to focus beyond inflation, which has continued to decline since it peaked last year. He'll also talk about decoupling from China and embrace a populist economic message. Today is also the deadline for the super PACs backing Trump, DeSantis and the other Republican presidential candidates to file their campaign finance reports. We'll be watching to see how much they raised, how much cash they have on hand and who's writing the checks — although any contributions made since June 30 won't be revealed for months. | | Hunter Biden's former business partner, Devon Archer, is scheduled to sit for a deposition today before the House Oversight Committee. One wrinkle: Archer was sentenced to prison last year after being convicted of fraud, but his appeals have delayed the day he must report to prison. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York sent a letter to the trial judge in the case on Saturday asking her to set a date for Archer to go to prison, prompting Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to cry foul. But the court isn't expected to make a decision before today's deposition, Politico's Kyle Cheney and Jordain Carney report, meaning it can move forward. | | President Biden is on vacation this week at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del. He'll leave for Wilmington, Del., on Friday. | | |  | From the courts | |  Fulton County district attorney Fani T. Willis has strongly hinted that she will seek indictments in the case. (David Walter Banks for The Washington Post) | | | Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis has strongly hinted for months that she'll seek multiple indictments in her investigation into whether Trump and his allies broke the law in their attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. The recent installation of orange security barriers near the Fulton County Courthouse is "the most visible sign yet of the looming charging decision in a case that has ensnared not only Trump but several high-profile Republicans who could either face charges or stand witness in a potential trial unlike anything seen before in this Southern metropolis," our colleague Holly Bailey reports from Atlanta: | - "It is one of several investigations into attempts to reverse Trump's loss in 2020, including a sprawling Justice Department probe overseen by special counsel Jack Smith that has sparked its own intensifying waiting game in recent days. Smith and his team have interviewed or sought information from several witnesses also key to the Georgia investigation."
- "While the pace of Smith's investigation has been unpredictable, [Willis] took the unusual step of publicly telegraphing that she plans to announce a charging decision in the Georgia case during the first three weeks of August, a period that opens Monday."
| | Here's what to expect as those weeks commence: | - "All eyes are now on two criminal grand jury panels sworn in on July 11 — one group that meets on Mondays and Tuesdays, the other that meets on Thursdays and Fridays," Holly writes. "One of the panels is likely to decide whether charges should be filed in the closely watched election interference case — a decision that could put Trump, who is now under indictment in two other criminal cases, in even more legal peril."
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