Senators Warren and Markey Vote to Confirm Three More Trump Cabinet Picks

Photo via Elizabeth Warren on Twitter

Just three days after Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey addressed a historic crowd gathered on the Common for the Boston Women’s March, vowing to fight back against President Donald Trump’s agenda, the Democratic senators voted to confirm three of Trump’s Cabinet picks, including Ben Carson.

“We can whimper. We can whine. Or we can fight back!” Warren said Saturday. “We come here to stand shoulder to shoulder to make clear: We are here! We will not be silent! We will not play dead! We will fight for what we believe in!”

But upon returning to Washington, Warren appeared to have changed her tune, showing little desire to fight back.

As a member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Warren voted to confirm Carson, a famed neurosurgeon and one-time Republican presidential candidate, as head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Keep in mind, this is after Carson said “it will not be my intention to do anything to benefit any American”—in an exchange with Warren.

.@SenWarren asks Dr. Ben Carson: “Can you just assure us that not one dollar will go to benefit either the President-elect or his family?” pic.twitter.com/lSyur2AYik

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 12, 2017

Warren’s office issued a statement Tuesday afternoon explaining her vote to confirm Carson, who previously compared public housing to communism, and said that LGBTQ Americans do not deserve “extra rights.”

Although I continue to have concerns about Dr. Carson’s inexperience in the field and his comments on poverty and government dependency, he has pledged to ‘look for ways to expand affordable housing options to everyone,’ to ‘aggressively defend the fair housing rights of all Americans’—including by applying the Fair Housing Act’s disparate impact standard—to ‘strongly support existing initiatives to combat homelessness, to enforce ‘without hesitation,’ equal access rules for LGBTQ Americans, to work with the Banking Committee to ensure that HUD funds are not improperly directed to the President’s businesses, to ‘recruit a bipartisan list of strong housing practitioners’ to serve with him at HUD, and to work with me to address the unacceptable levels of lead in public housing units.

“In light of these promises, I support Dr. Carson’s nomination and look forward to working with him to ensure that he follows through on his commitments,” Warren said.

Markey voted to confirm two Trump Cabinet picks Tuesday: Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary, and Elaine Chao, former labor secretary and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as transportation secretary.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is where the American Revolution began—right here,” Markey, clad in a pink scarf, told the more than 175,000 attendees of Saturday’s demonstration. “This is who we are. We are the revolutionaries.”

What a difference a couple days make.