This week, many Senators are expected to be at two Cabinet nomination hearings at once thanks to a jam-packed schedule orchestrated by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And worse still, most of those nominees’ ethics reviews and background checks haven’t been completed yet!

Rushing the confirmation process and holding hearings before ethics reviews and background checks is dangerous – especially for Trump’s nominees who have vast wealth, financial and business entanglements, and no public record of service.

Without a completed ethics review, Senators can’t fully examine Trump’s nominees’ fitness to hold some of the most powerful positions in the country.

For the last 40 years, the Office of Government Ethics has conducted ethics reviews and sometimes background checks to ensure that Cabinet members won’t violate federal ethics laws.

But the Office of Government Ethics hasn’t even received the initial draft financial disclosure reports for some of the nominees scheduled for hearings!

Some nominees – like civil rights enemy and oil investor Senator Jeff Sessions – have submitted incomplete disclosure forms. Others – like Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon who has close ties to Russia – haven’t submitted their tax returns.

And others – like big money donor Betsy DeVos and billionaire Wilbur Ross – haven’t submitted forms at all!

Ramming Trump’s corporate crony nominees through the confirmation process without a full picture of their financial entanglements and conflicts of interest is dangerous for our democracy.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing back, saying critics are complaining over small procedural issues.

But critics are only calling on McConnell to require nominees to meet the same ethical standards McConnell demanded of President Obama's nominees in 2009, including:

• A completed FBI background check;
• A completed Office of Government Ethics letter;
• A completed financial disclosure statements (and tax returns where they apply) and;
• A completed committee questionnaires submitted to the respective Senate committees. 

These are not unreasonable standards: The President’s Cabinet are some of the most powerful positions in the country, and the American people and their representatives in the Senate have a right to know a nominee’s potential for corruption in office.

It's time for the grassroots to hold McConnell to his own standards to hold confirmation hearings. Tell the Senate: No completed ethics reviews, no confirmation hearings!