WASHINGTON ― Senate Republicans are threatening to go “nuclear” and blow up Senate rules again to confirm certain Donald Trump nominees they say are being unfairly stalled by the Democrats ahead of the annual August recess.
“We’ve seen an unprecedented level of obstruction and delay and blocking from Democrats,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Wednesday in a speech on the Senate floor. “If you look at just the historical precedent with regard to [nominations], we have never seen in history anything like what the Democrats are now doing.”
“As of this date back in 2021, Joe Biden had gotten 46 nominees confirmed either by voice vote or unanimous consent. Donald Trump has zero,” he added.
Democrats are refusing to give consent to quickly confirm many of Trump’s lower-ranking executive nominees in protest of his administration’s policies and its freezing of federal funding to many government programs. They are insisting that the Senate hold procedural votes to cut off debate on nearly every nomination, forcing Republicans to burn valuable floor time.
Changing the rules to speed up confirmations of Trump’s nominees would require a simple majority of votes on the Senate floor. But it is considered an extreme move that could backfire on Republicans when they find themselves in the minority, as it did on Democrats when they changed the rules in 2013 for certain judicial nominations.
