Senate Republicans Confirm Four Dozen Nominees After Rule Change

Senate Republicans voted to confirm 48 of President Trump’s nominees at once, after changing the rules on certain Senate confirmations. The new rules allow the Senate to move multiple nominees with a simple majority vote, for many executive branch positions.

The rule change comes after Senate Republicans accused Senate Democrats of unfairly holding up President Trump’s nominees. After multiple threats to use the so-called “nuclear option,” Senate Republicans pulled the trigger. 

“If the Senate had continued at the pace that we’ve been proceeding at through the month of July there would still be hundreds of empty desks in the executive branch on President Trump’s last day in office in 2029,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD).  

Senator Thune said that the 48 confirmed received bipartisan support in the committee stage. However, the final vote was 51-47, with no Democrats voting to confirm.

The confirmed nominees include deputy secretaries for the Departments of Defense, Interior, Energy and others, along with ambassadorships, such as former Donald Trump Jr. fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle as Ambassador to Greece. 

Republicans plan to clear a second tranche of 100 or so nominees in the coming weeks. 

Democrats are crying foul. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has called the wave of President Trump’s nominees “historically bad,” recently said, “What Republicans have done is chip away at the Senate even more, to give Donald Trump more power and to rubber stamp whomever he wants, whenever he wants them, no questions asked.”

Eroding the Senate’s Power

Both parties have steadily chipped away at the Senate’s role as a check on presidential nominees.

In 2013, Democrats lowered the threshold for advancing most executive and judicial nominees from 60 votes to a simple majority. Republicans expanded that in 2015 to include Supreme Court nominees. And in 2017, Republicans cut debate time for most nominees.