Senate Republicans are actively exploring unilateral changes in Senate rules to speed confirmation of Trump administration nominees in the fall after they failed to break stiff Democratic resistance to executive branch picks before leaving on their August recess.
Senior Republicans say that talks are ongoing and that changes in confirmation procedure are likely in order to overcome Democratic insistence on holding formal roll call votes on every executive branch nominee. That requirement has slowed approval of President Trump’s picks for scores of top executive branch jobs.
“I think there are going to be rules changes, and whether they come by hard majority-only vote or whether we can find some by consensus is yet to be determined,” Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said on Capitol Hill this week as he called the nominations standoff a “crisis.”
Among the changes under consideration are shortening the time required between a procedural vote and final vote on a nominee, eliminating some procedural votes and allowing groups of nominees to be confirmed as a bloc.
Republicans would also like to reduce the approximately 1,200 executive branch positions subject to confirmation after Democrats forced recorded votes on lower-level nominees who have traditionally been confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent.
Triggering a rules change through majority muscle is known in the Senate as going nuclear because of the extreme partisan nature of such a move, as well as the cloud it can cast over the institution. An incendiary rules fight next month could poison relations just as Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline for funding the government and the Senate is making rare progress on individual spending bills.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader, warned that a partisan rules change would be a major mistake, would cede more Senate power to the White House and would invite retaliation if Democrats won back Senate control.
“When they go it alone, they have real trouble,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview, pointing to the Republican-only tax and policy bill facing voter pushback at constituent town halls this summer.
As the Senate wound down last week, Mr. Schumer engaged in serious negotiations with Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican and majority leader, along with the White House, to see whether they could reach agreement to allow Republicans to meet their goal of 150 confirmed Trump nominees before recess.
In an initial round of talks, Democrats offered to clear the way for about 25 relatively noncontentious nominees. In exchange, they wanted the White House to release an array of funds it has held up, including $5 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $50 million for combating AIDS overseas and $142 million for UNICEF programs along with $300 million in humanitarian assistance for Gaza.
When Republicans then pushed for more confirmations, Democrats countered with a demand that the White House commit in writing that it would not try to force any more spending cuts through Congress before Oct. 1.
Negotiations broke down and Mr. Trump lashed out at Mr. Schumer on social media, telling him to “GO TO HELL!” Mr. Thune adjourned the Senate and sent lawmakers home.
“We offered him very reasonable things,” Mr. Schumer said of the president. “He got nothing and walked away with his tail between his legs.”
Republicans said the Democratic “hardball” approach was not a total victory. “They walked away without getting the additional funding they could have had with an agreement with the White House,” Mr. Rounds said.
Republicans were not completely shut out on nominations in the final days, pushing through about two dozen even as Democrats forced them to expend as much time as possible to do so. Among them were some highly contentious Trump choices such as the former Trump lawyer Emil Bove III for an appeals court post and the former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Mr. Trump ended up with 135 confirmations in his first six months, with more than 140 nominees still awaiting confirmation votes. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. saw 150 nominees confirmed in the same period in 2021, about half by voice vote.
Republican officials said senators were now talking during the recess about the exact nature of the changes they would pursue and the timing for any fight with Democrats, who would be very reluctant to make any changes without significant concessions.
Many Republicans were furious at the Democratic tactics, pointing out that it was a substantial change from the past and reflected a Democratic failure to recognize that Mr. Trump was the duly elected president entitled to his personnel choices.
“This is not going to stand for much longer,” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the No. 3 Senate Republican, declared on the floor as he vented about the Democratic approach.
Despite the widespread anger among Republicans, it remained unclear whether Mr. Thune would have the votes to impose the changes. Some Republicans would be reluctant to upend Senate rules on a partisan basis, and Mr. Thune could afford to lose only three Republican votes.
Senate rules changes are supposed to require the approval of 67 senators, purposefully making them very difficult to enact. In executing the nuclear option, requiring only a majority vote, members of the majority party instead employ a complex series of votes to, in essence, establish new Senate precedents in line with their procedural goals.
Harry Reid of Nevada, then the majority leader, did so in 2013 when Democrats lowered the filibuster threshold on most nominees to a simple majority rather than 60 votes after Senate Republicans systematically blocked a series of Obama administration appointees to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Republicans retaliated with the same maneuver in 2017 to lower the threshold for Supreme Court nominees, allowing Mr. Trump to install three justices during his first term.
Facing Republican opposition to voting rights legislation in 2022, Democrats tried and failed to lower the filibuster threshold on bills falling under that category when Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who were Democrats at the time, voted with Republicans to block the effort.
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
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