WASHINGTON — Republicans triggered the “nuclear” option for the second time in less than a week on Wednesday, unilaterally changing the Senate’s rules to confirm 48 of President Donald Trump’s nominees with a single vote over the objections of Democrats.
Bitterly complaining about months of Democratic obstruction, GOP senators last week began the process of establishing a new precedent that now allows them to confirm scores of Trump’s nominees in large batches, rather than individually, with little to no debate. The rule applies to ambassadors and lower-ranking executive nominees only — at least for now.
“Senate Democrats are freezing the Senate Floor, freezing the federal government, and freezing our nation’s progress,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said ahead of the rules change on Wednesday. “This harms America’s safety. It hamstrings the agenda that Americans voted for.”
“It is time for the Senate to clear the nominations backlog and clear it quickly, and so we will,” he added. “That way, the Senate can get back to work of legislating, working on behalf of the American people.”
The list of Trump nominees expected to be confirmed on Thursday includes Trump allies like Kimberly Guilfoyle to be U.S. ambassador to Greece and Callista Gingrich to be U.S. ambassador to Switzerland. It also includes scores of largely noncontroversial nominees that received bipartisan support in committee.
Democrats blocked quick floor votes on their confirmations, however, forcing Republicans to tee up votes on each one individually, a process that would have eaten up months of valuable floor time and ground the Senate to a halt.
“These nominees are just horrible, one after the other. And now Republicans don’t want to even vote on them.”
– Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) argued Trump’s nominees deserved unprecedented scrutiny because many lacked the proper qualifications. Some Democrats simply placed holds on nominees in opposition to Trump’s policies and his attacks against the rule of law.
“Donald Trump has nominated, as a whole, some of the worst, some of the most unqualified, some of the most unscrupulous loyalists ever, to serve in the federal government,” Schumer said last week. “These nominees are just horrible, one after the other. And now Republicans don’t want to even vote on them.”
The new rule speeding up confirmations of presidential nominees will apply to future Democratic administrations as well — provided their party also controls the Senate at the same time. Some Democratic senators who share frustrations with the confirmation process sought to reach a last-minute deal confirming some Trump nominees while averting the rules change last week, but Republicans rejected that effort, accusing them of stalling.
Republicans have gone “nuclear,” changing the Senate’s rules with only 51 votes, repeatedly over the last decade.
After Democrats in 2013 did so by reducing the cloture threshold for most presidential nominations to a simple majority, Republicans followed suit by doing the same for Supreme Court nominees. In 2019, the GOP went nuclear again to reduce the debate time for most presidential nominees from 30 hours to just two hours. And earlier this year, Republicans steamrolled the Senate rules to help pass their multitrillion-dollar tax cuts.
All these rule changes have led many in the Capitol to believe that the end of the legislative filibuster can’t be too far off, despite Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) repeated promises to preserve it.
“Senator Thune kept saying how he was going to respect the institution and not make these kinds of changes. And here we are,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told HuffPost. “So I hope they’ll stick by their commitment, but I’m less sanguine about that than I was two months ago.”
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who, like many of his Democratic colleagues, believes the filibuster ought to be eliminated, said he’s been surprised that Republicans haven’t already done so.
“Republicans have been poking holes in the filibuster through the nuclear option for all these appointments,” Fetterman told HuffPost. “We’ve kind of, you know, brought that on ourselves. It’s one thing to just be strident, but you can’t just be total dicks and shut everything down.”
“Win elections, then you can change the rules, and then you can have the agenda,” he added.
The filibuster hasn’t stood in the way of Trump’s agenda in the Senate, however. Republicans passed their massive $4 trillion One Big Beautiful Bill earlier this year via budget reconciliation, a process that only requires a simple majority of votes for passage. It contained a huge infusion of federal funds for immigration enforcement, defense, as well as massive tax cuts for the mostly wealthy. Some Republicans want to pass a second reconciliation package in the coming months that would again sidestep a filibuster and notch even more wins for Trump.