The Confirmation Process Is Not a Weapon

Restoring Order, Timelines, and Accountability to Federal Appointments

Campaign Briefing: Structural Reforms for Trustworthy Governance

2028 Presidential Campaign of Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

April 7, 2026

I. What the Confirmation Process Was Supposed to Be

The framers of the Constitution understood something simple: the President needed to fill positions, and the Senate needed to make sure those positions were filled by people qualified to hold them. Advice and consent was never meant to be a game. It was meant to be a filter — a professional review conducted by people accountable to the public, applied to nominations made by an executive accountable to the same public.

That is not what it has become.

Today the confirmation process is a political weapon. Nominees wait months. Sometimes years. Critical agencies operate under acting officials who carry real authority but face no accountability to Congress because they were never confirmed by it. The work of government grinds down. The people who depend on these agencies — veterans waiting on benefits, families waiting on housing, communities waiting on inspections — absorb the cost of a process that has been deliberately broken by people who benefit from breaking it.

This has to stop. And this administration intends to stop it.

II. Three Ways the System Broke

It broke gradually, and it broke in three directions.

First, appointments became spoils. The power to nominate was converted into a reward system — for donors, allies, loyalists, campaign operatives. Competence became secondary. The result is nominees who arrive at agencies not knowing the mission, the statute, or the people they are supposed to lead. The learning curve is paid for by the public.

Second, judicial nominations became ideological instruments. Presidents stopped looking for jurists and started looking for outcomes. Nominees were selected for the predictability of their rulings, not the quality of their legal reasoning. That is not a judiciary. It is a legislature in robes — and it corrodes the legitimacy of every decision those courts produce.

Third, the Senate turned advice and consent into theater. Nominees are held for months as leverage — not because they are unqualified, but because holding them is useful. The Senate is not a platform for ideological gamesmanship. It is the filter through which competence and character must pass. When it stops functioning as that filter, government stops functioning as a government.

III. What This Administration Will Do

On Day One, this administration will issue an executive order establishing a merit-first nomination standard for all executive branch appointments below Cabinet level. Every nominee will be subject to pre-nomination review by an Independent Public Service Qualifications Panel evaluating subject matter expertise, administrative leadership record, ethical conduct, and affirmative public service history. Political loyalty will not appear on that list. Campaign contribution history will not appear on that list.

We will submit nominees on time. We will provide the Senate with complete documentation.

We will advocate publicly for timely up-or-down votes and will not play the delay game — or reward those who do.

For judicial nominations, we will establish a Judicial Fitness and Impartiality Council composed of retired federal judges, legal ethicists, and constitutional scholars from across the jurisprudential spectrum. Their findings will be public. No nominee will be selected from organizations that promote partisan confirmation pledges. No litmus tests. We are looking for constitutionalists — people who understand that their job is to interpret the law.

IV. Rebuilding the Senate's Role

This campaign cannot compel the Senate to do its job. But we can model what good-faith engagement looks like and build the public pressure that makes delay politically costly.

We will advocate for a Non-Partisan Senate Vetting Bureau tasked with producing standardized background reports, uniform conflict-of-interest evaluations, and neutral assessments of judicial temperament — accessible equally to all Senators. We will push for restored committee hearing norms: full questioning rounds, equal time, and a public record that citizens can actually read.

Private deals behind closed doors will not be the currency of this administration's nominations. The Senate will receive what it needs to do its job well. What it does with that is a question the public will be watching.

V. After Confirmation

Accountability does not end when the gavel falls. This administration will establish a Post-Appointment Ethics and Impact Review Board for executive officials, conducting annual reviews of conduct, conflicts of interest, and mission adherence — with public reporting of violations.

Every federal judge confirmed under this administration will receive a Presidential Letter of Independence affirming that their allegiance is to the Constitution alone, that this President will never attempt to influence a judicial decision, and that this administration will defend judicial independence even when rulings go against it.

The office is a public trust. We will treat it that way — before the confirmation, during it, and long after it.

When we choose people to serve this nation, we must ask not how they serve a party — but how they serve the public.

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

2028 Presidential Campaign of Martin A. Ginsburg, RN