So the society of odd fellows, which describes many of President-elect Donald Trump’s selections for his Cabinet, begin undergoing the Senate hearing process this week as they await the constitutionally mandated “Advice and Consent” of that austere (or should it be insincere?) body.

Odd fellows because the country has a former governor who once ran for president on a platform that included dissolving the Department of Energy now nominated to head said agency. Another nominee is picked to direct the Environmental Protection Agency who is critical of the agency for aggressively employing federal regulations to protect the environment. In fact, as an attorney general that nominee frequently sued the EPA about its enforcement of environmental rules.

But maybe that fits in well with the oil baron selection for secretary of state; the private and home schooling advocate to lead the federal government’s Department of Education; the labor secretary choice who prefers robot laborers over human ones; and the retired brain surgeon chosen for secretary of Housing and Urban Development who concedes he has absolutely no experience in such matters. We await the naming of a real estate broker as surgeon general.

As head scratching and headache inducing as some of these picks may be, the president-elect should have the right to put the team in place he wants to pursue his agenda. That agenda would appear to be to ask Congress to gut environmental and labor regulations, and then not work very hard to enforce the rules that remain, making life easier for corporate America, if not for working America or breathing America.

Public schools will be left providing education for the kids who do not escape to private schools bolstered, if Trump’s pick gets her way, by federal programs aimed at creating competition from the private sector. It’s hard to imagine the surgery Dr. Ben Carson may administer to the nation’s public housing system. Maybe he will convert the housing for grain storage, his self-generated theory as to why the Egyptians built the pyramids.

Yet short of evidence of malfeasance, blatant ethical conflicts of interest, or beliefs that are in opposition to the nation’s democratic ideals, the Senate should give consent. The Democratic minority should not seek to delay for delay’s sake. The business of the country must proceed.

However, senators, of both parties, must get the information they need before providing advice and consent. Walter Shaub, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, recently informed Senate leaders that not all of the nominees scheduled for hearings had completed the ethics review process. The OGE director said his office had not received even initial draft financial disclosure reports for some of the nominees facing hearings.

Confirmation should not proceed without full disclosure of such information.

Due largely to Republican delaying tactics during Obama’s term, 88 U.S. District Court judgeships, 13 percent of all such positions, remain vacant. While it might be tempting for Democrats to try to make life difficult for Trump and the GOP-led Senate in filling those posts with conservative-minded judges, for the good of the justice system and unclogging the courts the process should proceed expeditiously.

The one position where Democrats should seek to draw a deep line in the sand is filling the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. The New York Times was on target in its Dec. 24 editorial calling the position Trump gets to fill the “stolen Supreme Court seat.”

Almost a year remained in the second term of duly elected President Obama when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. Obama selected a highly qualified, well-respected centrist in Merrick Garland. The Republican-controlled Senate, with an election nearly a year away, refused to act on the appointment.

Unfortunately, the ploy worked, setting a dangerous political precedent. How long will future Senates delay Supreme Court appointments because the other party controls the presidency? Will vacancies that occur two years before the next presidential election remain unfilled? Three years?

On this issue, Democrats should dig in, launching as best they can a fight to oppose any nominee who is not a centrist in the Garland mold. To do otherwise would be to reward the outrageous Republican behavior during 2016. In the end, the Republicans have the 52-48 votes to install a staunch conservative, but Democrats should make them squirm and expose their judicial theft.