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Republicans Go 'Nuclear' On Senate Rules — And Their Own Power

WASHINGTON ― Republicans triggered the “nuclear” option on Thursday, unilaterally changing the Senate’s rules to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominees more quickly and dealing yet another blow to minority rights in the upper chamber, where the filibuster’s days are increasingly looking numbered.

GOP senators voted to establish a new precedent that will allow them to confirm scores of Trump’s nominees in large batches, rather than individually. It applies only to ambassadors and lower-ranking executive nominees ― which Republican senators said is needed to overcome unprecedented Democratic obstruction and fill out Trump’s administration. They plan to confirm a list of 48 Trump nominees with a single vote under the new precedent next week.

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“Democrats — and their political base — cannot deal with the fact that the American people elected President Trump,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.-S.D.) said in a speech on Thursday. “And so they’re dragging out every confirmation in retaliation.

When Democrats pressed Thune for more time to hammer out a bipartisan agreement and to postpone a vote on changing the rules to next week, Thune declined, expressing his frustration with the pace of confirmations so far.

“How much time is enough?” he fumed on the Senate floor. “Give me a break!”

Republicans have complained that, unlike President Joe Biden’s administration, none of Trump’s second-term nominees had been confirmed via voice vote, a quick way of approving non-controversial lower-ranking executive nominees. They accused Democrats of gumming up the Senate and keeping government positions vacant out of spite.

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But Democrats argued that Trump’s nominees deserved unprecedented scrutiny, citing his nominations of anti-vaxxers and loyalists to top government posts, as well as his unprecedented attacks on the powers of Congress and the rule of law.

“What Republicans have done is chip away at the Senate even more, to give Donald Trump even more power and to rubber-stamp whoever he wants whenever he wants them, no questions asked,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday.

“When we have a president like this one, who you know has no sense of integrity or honesty or fidelity to the truth, who you know doesn’t care about acting corruptly — look at what he’s doing with his own personal wealth — then the Senate’s job to scrutinize and review nominees is doubly important under a president like this,” he said.

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The full list of nominees Republicans are planning to confirm quickly next week includes Trump allies like Kimberly Guilfoyle to be ambassador to Greece and Callista Gingrich to be ambassador to Switzerland. It also includes scores of largely non-controversial nominees that received bipartisan support in committee. Republicans will have to go “nuclear” a second time to confirm them next week, ultimately.

Democrats have acknowledged they, too, want to reform how the Senate confirms executive nominations. In 2023, for example, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) introduced a proposal that would have allowed up to 10 nominees to be quickly confirmed in a single vote ― although that change wouldn’t have taken effect until the next president took office.

A group of Democratic senators tried to resurrect that proposal with some changes in a last-ditch effort to defuse the situation on Thursday. Still, the negotiations stalled and Republicans decided to press forward anyway.

“We were achingly close to a deal, but I’m afraid my colleagues on the other side have run out of patience,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) lamented on the Senate floor.

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Thursday’s use of the so-called nuclear option is only the latest in a Senate where longstanding rules are increasingly being thrown by the wayside. In 2013, Democrats used the procedure to reduce the cloture threshold for nominations to a simple majority ― except for Supreme Court nominations. In 2017, Republicans followed suit and included nominations to the high court to confirm Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. In 2019, they went nuclear again to reduce the debate time for most presidential nominees from 30 hours to just two hours. And just this year, Republicans steamrolled the Senate rules to help pass their multitrillion-dollar tax cuts.

Of course, changing Senate rules cuts both ways. Republicans will find it harder to stop a future Democratic president’s nominees, provided that Democrats also control the Senate at the same time. And the new rules that Republicans adopted on Thursday will make placing a “hold” on a nominee or a group of nominees ― which blocks their expedited consideration ― more difficult for members of the minority, whereas the majority will still be able to do so.

“We’re gonna have to live with this, too, but the status quo is untenable,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) acknowledged on Thursday when asked about the minority’s ability to place holds on nominees in the future.

“Sadly, we’ve been brought to this point,” added Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). “I think the Republicans here don’t really want to do this, but when you have this level of obstruction, it has to be met with some sort of way to address it.”

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One rule Republicans have promised not to eliminate is the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance legislation in the Senate. They’ve resisted repeated calls by Trump to gut the filibuster, even if it might hinder the advancement of his administration’s agenda. But repeatedly blowing up the Senate’s rules to confirm Trump nominees and get his agenda passed is not something that Democrats are likely to forget. Already, many on the left have called for eliminating the filibuster, and seeing Trump notch win after win is likely only to increase pressure on Democrats to kill the filibuster the next time they are in power.

“This is a sad, regrettable day for the Senate. And I believe it won’t take very long for Republicans to wish they had not pushed the chamber further down this awful road,” Schumer warned on Thursday.