Remember in late July or early August the news out of Washington reported the Senate was going to delay their “work from home session” scheduled for the month of August due to the overwhelming number of presidential nominations they had to confirm? Today, these Senators are “working from home” and there are still, according to some reports, hundreds of presidential nominations awaiting confirmation by the United States Senate. One news source said the Senate adjourned Saturday evening (August 2nd) while another reported the lawmakers left Washington on Monday (August 4th) – either way the Senators are not completing the job we sent them to Washington, D.C. to do and are not confirming the presidential nominations. President Trump just recently completed the first 200 days of his administration so you must wonder how long must he wait for the confirmation of these nominees?

The Democrats in the Senate are filibustering Trump’s nominees. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and the Democrats have demanded that President Trump free up billions in funding for the National Institutes of Health and foreign aid before they would consider voting to confirm the nominees. This is the background to President Trump using the word “extortion”! Being curious where Wisconsin’s Senator Tammy Baldwin is in the middle of this mess, I searched online for “Senator Tammy Baldwin’s recent votes”.

Senator Baldwin (D-WI) is on the record as voting 32 times on August 1st and 2nd. During these two days there were seven cloture votes. A cloture vote is to stop debate and bring the question to the floor for vote. Sen Baldwin voted nay six times and yea just once and all seven votes were agreed to (stop debate and vote on the issue). Did Senator Baldwin actually have something to add to the discussion or was this a Democrat’s partisan delay tactic? There was a procedural vote for which Sen Baldwin voted yea but the measure was rejected.

Only one vote was for the passage of a Bill: “H.R. 3944 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026”. Sen Baldwin voted with the majority and the bill passed 81-15. Preceding this vote, there were eight votes on Amendments to H.R. 3944. Without knowing a lot more of the details, the data is near meaningless; but Sen Baldwin voted 5 yea’s and 3 nay’s while 2 were agreed to and 6 were rejected.

Of significant note to this discussion on presidential nominees, there were fifteen votes on nominations. Sen Baldwin voted 12 nay’s and only 3 yea’s; however, all 15 were confirmed. This is highly significant as Sen Baldwin voted against 80% of President Trump’s nominees being considered on those two consecutive days while only supporting 20%. The only possible conclusion is that Senator Baldwin put partisanship over patriotism. This is even more interesting when realizing all nominees considered on those two days were confirmed meaning either near unanimous Republican support or some good bipartisan support for each and every nominee.

The thought-provoking question then becomes “Who does Senator Baldwin represent?”

Sen Baldwin is the junior US Senator from Wisconsin. One of several swing states that went for President Trump in 2024. She represents Wisconsin where six of eight Congressmen are Republican. She represents Wisconsin where both chambers of the State Legislature are Republican majority. But Senator Baldwin apparently puts partisanship over her constituents and votes the hyper-partisan Democrat Party line.

Sen Baldwin belongs to Sen Chuck Schumer’s Democrat Party that wants to use extortion involving billions of dollars to confirm the rest of President Trump’s nominees. If Sen Schumer is successful in this extortion, some would call Sen Baldwin an “accomplice to the crime”! Sen Baldwin belongs to the Democrat Party of Wisconsin that somehow got the Wisconsin legislative districts maps redrawn early last year to allegedly favor the Democrats (and totally mess up the Coulee Region).

Sen Baldwin was just re-elected to the United States Senate in 2024 for another 6 year term. One would think that after a quarter of a century in Congress (she was in the House starting in 1999 before being elected to the Senate in 2012), she should know who she represents. Let’s hope that if she runs for re-election in 2030 someone will ask the simple question:” Who does Senator Baldwin represent?”