It's been 184 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, and 48 days since the House passed their compromise $2.2 trillion bill, both of which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to take up.
More than 250,000 Americans are now dead from COVID-19. Tens of thousands of businesses have shuttered for good. Nearly 750,000 people filed first-time unemployment insurance claims last week. The Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which is supporting 4.4 million people right now, expires on Dec. 26. What's McConnell doing about it all? Running his judicial confirmation conveyor belt.
On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed a 33-year-old lawyer, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, to a lifetime appointment on the Tampa division of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. She was deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association because she has never tried a criminal or civil case, has never even been co-counsel in a courtroom. But she's a member of the Federalist Society and a protege of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Oh, and has been working for Jones Day, the only major law firm still representing Trump in his baseless legal campaign to overturn the election. She's the 227th Trump confirmation and the eighth "not qualified" Trump judge confirmed.
The Senate is scheduled to be out of town all of next week for the Thanksgiving holiday, so McConnell wants to get all the judges he can installed. That would clear the deck for a government funding bill, which has to pass by Dec. 11 to avoid a shutdown. Where saving the nation fits into his agenda isn't clear. The obvious answer is that it doesn't fit in at all.