The U.S Senate has many important responsibilities.  Among them are making laws, ratifying justices to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts and approving presidential nominees for key Cabinet positions.  For the newly re-elected Donald Trump Administration the latter responsibility is key to determining whether the chamber is ready to step up to its constitutional responsibility as a separate branch of government or whether its GOP majority will simply go along with questionable nominees in order to accede to President-elect Trump’s desires.  It will be a bellwether of what is to come from the branch of government that can put a check on a new President who seems to want to put the Imperial Presidency on skates.  Will they?  Early signs that they may be taking seriously their independent role was the selection of Sen. John Thune as the Republican Majority Leader and the pressure they exerted to force Matt Gaetz to withdraw his nomination for Attorney General.  Joining us to discuss what to expect from the Senate is a man who has worked there and written a trilogy of books about the last sixty years of the Senate.  Ira Shapiro’s latest book is “The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America.”