Republicans voted on Thursday to change the rules of the Senate in a rare move that will allow them to expedite the confirmation process for President Donald Trump’s executive branch nominees.
The party-line vote using the so-called “nuclear option” will enable the Senate to confirm some presidential nominees as groups, rather than individually, with only a simple majority vote.
The maneuver comes as a backlog of almost 150 of Trump Administration nominees awaits floor votes and partisan gridlock has slowed confirmations over the summer, causing discontent among the President and Republican lawmakers.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune started the process on Monday by introducing 48 of Trump’s nominees to be voted on as a group, including for positions in cabinet departments, the inspector general of the CIA, and ambassadorships. “Democrats have flat-out broken the Senate confirmation process. We are more than seven months into President Trump’s current term, and the Senate has yet to confirm one single civilian nominee by unanimous consent or voice vote,” Thune said on Thursday.
“For two centuries, most presidential nominees have sailed through this chamber by voice vote and by unanimous consent,” said Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, the No. 2 Republican in the upper chamber. “That was the gold standard of advice and consent. Senator Schumer and Senate Democrats abandoned it. Instead of deliberation, Senate Democrats chose unprecedented delay. That ends now.”
Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Republicans’ unilateral decision to change the chamber’s rules, saying it will turn the confirmation process into “a conveyor belt for unqualified Trump nominees.”
“This move by Republicans was not so much about ending obstruction, as they claim. Rather, it was another act of genuflection to the executive branch,” Schumer said Thursday on the Senate floor.
The rule change does not apply to nominees for positions in the Cabinet, federal judiciary, or Supreme Court, who will still need to be confirmed on a one-by-one basis. It is expected to be finalized next week.
What is the nuclear option?
The “nuclear option” is a maneuver that allows the majority party to override the Senate’s standing rules with a simple majority vote, as opposed to the usually required two-thirds supermajority.
It has most commonly been discussed as a procedural tactic to defuse the threat of a filibuster slowing down or blocking the majority party’s agenda.
The maneuver is known as the “nuclear option” due to its extreme nature and its consequences for the minority party, whose ability to push back on the majority is severely curtailed once the rule change has been finalized.
Both parties have used it in recent years
Though the nuclear option has rarely been employed, this is not the first time a party has triggered it to speed up the confirmation process for key nominees in recent years.
In 2013, under the Obama Administration, Senate Democrats used it to eliminate the filibuster on executive appointments and judicial nominations.
Republicans have since deployed the maneuver two other times. In 2017, Senate Republicans eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in an effort to allow the GOP to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch with a simple majority vote. They invoked the nuclear option again two years later to reduce debate for most presidential nominees.
“I support the step a majority of Senators took today to change the ways of Washington by changing the way Congress does business,” President Barack Obama said when Democrats first triggered the nuclear option in 2013. “This gridlock has not served the cause of justice. In fact it has undermined it.”
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