West Virginians awaiting U.S. Senate confirmations will have to wait a little bit longer.

Due to Senate Democrats dragging out votes on President Donald Trump’s appointees, the Republican majority has begun approving appointees in large batches. On Thursday, the Senate approved 48 Trump appointees.

The next big block of appointees (hat tip Frank Thorp V at NBC News) will likely occur at the beginning of October, assuming the nation is not dealing with a government shutdown. The next block consists of 59 names, including three West Virginians.

State Sen. Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha, was nominated by Trump in February to be general counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Stuart testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance at the end of July.

Stuart, a former chairman of the West Virginia Republican Party and campaign chair for Trump in 2016, was elected to the state Senate in 2022 and named chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee beginning in 2025. His four-year term is up in 2026. Stuart was also the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia during Trump’s first term.

Speaking of U.S. attorneys, the next batch of appointees includes former Republican state lawmaker and 2024 primary candidate for governor Moore Capito for U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia and Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Matt Harvey for the Northern District.

Capito, the son of U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., is an attorney for Babst Calland in Charleston. He served four two-year terms in the House of Delegates and chaired the powerful House Judiciary Committee until resigning in 2023 to focus on the race for governor in the Republican primary. Capito came in second in a six-person primary, losing to current Gov. Patrick Morrisey, the former state attorney general.

Harvey is in his third four-year term as Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney, first taking office in 2017. Harvey has prior experience as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Berkeley and Kanawha counties. He also served as chairman of the West Virginia First Foundation, the private nonprofit organization charged with distributing part of the nearly $1 billion in opioid settlement funds. He resigned from the foundation last Thursday at its regular meeting.

So, barring a government shutdown, those confirmations should take place next month.

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Do I think there will be a federal government shutdown? My 8-ball says the outcome is unclear. Republicans just want a clean seven-week continuing resolution to get the government through the beginning of the federal fiscal year on Oct. 1. Congress is also working on several appropriations bills for fiscal year 2026. But Democrats are wanting assurances attached to keep Affordable Care Act subsidies funded. Those subsidies will expire at the end of the calendar year.

A government shutdown benefits no one and harms everyone, especially going into the 2026 midterm elections, where Democratic leaders see a real chance of retaking the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. But who gets the blame?

On a related note, my wife and I had the opportunity once to be on Capitol Hill more than a decade ago when Congress was trying to avoid a government shutdown. Somehow, we left town right as the shutdown was going into effect, so we were able to take in the monuments before the Park Police started roping everything off.

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All is quiet on the state government front right now. As I said last week, the potential for a special session for PEIA before the end of the year becomes less likely with every passing day. Gov. Patrick Morrisey is pushing for public input on the state’s application for a portion of $50 billion for rural healthcare initiatives.

I did have to ask the governor, a proponent of ending the state’s certificate of need program for health care services, about what kind of effect CON repeal would have given that rural hospitals and health care providers operate on narrow margins with a patient mix primarily of Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP and PEIA participants.

“I’m a big advocate of competition, and I think it can improve health care outcomes in our state, but I’m here today to focus on how we can all work together,” Morrisey said, artfully dodging the crux of the question, which will likely come up again as a bill during the 2026 legislative session in January.

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I want to give a special shoutout to the state Department of Administration and the General Services Division for the work being done in the basement of the State Capitol Building.

At the beginning of June, a water line in the basement blew. That line held all the water used to keep the building cool, so when that line blew, the entire contents emptied into the basement, ruining floors, drywall, equipment and furniture.

The Capitol Press Room, where I typically work Monday through Friday as the lone bureau chief outside of the annual 60-day legislative session, only sustained minor flooding, but all the carpet had to be ripped out and some of the drywall needed repaired.

The Capitol Press Room is a ghost of what it once was. Most news outlets with space only really use it during the session, special sessions or interim meetings. The only other person who works out of the space during the week is a part-time opinion columnist.

Point being, it cannot be easy for General Services to work with six different news outlets to coordinate moving personal items and furniture, some of which is a hodgepodge of stuff dating back decades. Much of the items include old documents, certificates and plaques left behind by reporters long since dead and outlets that no longer maintain Capitol bureaus.

So, here’s to the General Services, who have finally been able to start work in the Capitol Press Room. While I have enjoyed working from a combination of home and a coffee shop on Charleston’s West Side (Mea Cuppa), I am looking forward to the privacy of my office.

(Adams is the state government reporter for Ogden Newspapers. He can be contacted at sadams@newsandsentinel.com)