Donald Trump Cabinet Update: Democrats Vow To Delay Confirmations For 'Unqualified' Appointees

President-elect Donald Trump has spent the last three weeks appointing political and corporate leaders to top positions in his White House cabinet. However, it could take months before any of them are officially confirmed by the Senate if a group of Democrats have their way.

Confirming a president-elect’s top picks to their administration is typically a quick and painless process. President Barack Obama had his first seven nominees confirmed by the senate on his first day in office, followed by a dozen other confirmations that same week. But Democrats in the Senate, who watched as their Republican counterparts stalled, delayed and blocked the president from appointing Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court’s open seat for years, are warning of a similar fate for Trump’s appointments.

Though Democrats do not have enough votes in the Senate to block one of Trump’s appointments, they have the power to create an exhaustive, months-long process that could potentially diminish Trump’s first 100 days in office. But for Senate Democrats warning of bad karma for the GOP, delaying confirmations for top-level positions isn’t as much about resisting a Trump presidency as it is about ensuring each chosen nominee is actually qualified to serve.

"I don’t want to needlessly prevent President Trump from being successful," Democratic Sen. Chris Coons told Politico. "But accelerating the confirmation of unacceptable candidates who have views that are outside the mainstream is not constructive."

Trump has appointed and is considering a number of politicians who, by any means, are qualified to serve top-level positions: from selecting former Deputy of Labor and Deputy Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao to serve as transportation secretary to considering Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker for secretary of state. But a number of the Republican billionaire's appointees are raising eyebrows, including Dr. Ben Carson as the head of housing and urban development. Carson, a retired surgeon, has never held any cabinet position, or any elected government office for that matter.

Meanwhile, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi blasted Trump’s housing and urban development pick, calling Carson a "disconcerting and disturbingly unqualified choice."

Some Democrats have been pointing to the GOP’s shocking win across the nation on Election Day after a years-long failure of working across party lines as part of the reason they’ll stall on confirming any appointments they feel are unqualified.

"They’ve been rewarded for stealing a Supreme Court justice," Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown told Politico. "We’re going to help them confirm their nominees, many of whom are disqualified? It’s not obstruction, it’s not partisan, it’s just a duty to find out what they’d do in these jobs."