

Your domain name resolves fine for me, and it’s true you’ll need to set up https for it to work in a browser, but even with curl I get a timeout. Maybe you stopped running httpd?
The hosts is mostly so your computer can connect out to other websites, but doesn’t matter for being able to connect to something you’re serving.
Instead of httpd, maybe try out Caddy. It makes https pretty simple and free once you have a working Caddyfile.
The only people with the power to decide he is unfit are all in congress, and playing a “my team vs your team” game. I’m assuming they think they’ll look bad or weak or like traitors and are not willing to actually do it, or there are simply two distinct realities people live in, and in one of them he is perfectly fit to do the job.