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.
Republicans went nuclear and unilaterally changed the rules in 2017 by reducing the amount of post-cloture debate time for most nominees from 30 hours to two hours. Now, some Republican senators are pushing for even less debate to clear the backlog of Trump nominations.
“Why not 10 minutes?” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) told reporters this week, suggesting a much smaller period of debate for each nominee.
Republicans are also discussing the possibility of Trump making recess appointments to temporarily fill vacancies while the Senate is on recess. However, this would be a more difficult solution since both houses of Congress would first need to vote to adjourn, as laid out in the Constitution. The House left town for its recess last week and is holding pro forma sessions only.
GOP senators are furious about the nominations backlog, threatening to act unless Democrats agree to quickly confirm a bloc of nominees before the Senate goes on recess next month.
“When the minority engages in wildly unreasonable conduct and massive obstruction, you can expect the majority to act, and respond,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters on Tuesday.
Republicans engaged in their own obstruction to President Joe Biden’s nominees last year. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), for example, single-handedly blocked hundreds of noncontroversial promotions for military officers for over a year in protest of the Biden administration’s abortion policies.
This time, however, Democrats are shrugging off the GOP threats.
“I mean they went nuclear already when they fucked with reconciliation,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) told HuffPost, noting how Senate Republicans changed the chamber’s budget rules to push through their massive package of tax cuts earlier this month.
“You mean advance bad Trump nominees that help the Republicans who just voted a rescission package to undermine all budget negotiations?” added Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) when asked if Democrats should agree to expedite Trump’s nominees, referring to the GOP legislation canceling spending Congress previously approved on foreign aid and public broadcasting.