The U.S. Senate confirmed 48 of President Donald Trump’s nominees in a single vote on Thursday. The vote was 51-47. This marks a significant shift from the slow walking of even low-level executive branch nominees. This move followed a Republican-led rules change, dubbed the “nuclear option,” which allowed the confirmation of multiple nominees en bloc with a simple majority vote, bypassing the time-consuming voting of cloture on each nominee separately.
The decision, approved by a 53-45 party-line vote, was a response to prolonged Democratic delays that had created a backlog of nearly 100 civilian nominees, frustrating Republican efforts to fill executive branch positions; see About Time: Senate GOP Triggers Nuclear Option on Trump Nominees – RedState. During the first Trump administration, over 50 percent of his nominees received approval by voice vote. Under Biden, that number was 60 percent. So far, not a single nominee has received a voice vote.
Chuck Schumer has claimed that the refusal to give consent was justified because the nominees were “historically bad. That is nonsense. Trump has appointed some top-shelf people, and the only reason for Schumer’s roadblock was that he was trying to obstruct Trump’s ability to carry out the will of the majority of Americans.
Among those confirmed were high-profile figures like Kimberly Guilfoyle, appointed as ambassador to Greece, Callista Gingrich, named ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and former Rep. Brandon Williams, designated as undersecretary for nuclear security at the Department of Energy.
Much of this vote should be credited to Chuck Schumer’s mad diplomatic skilz. His resolute refusal to negotiate resulted in President Trump losing his patience.
Republicans first proposed changing the rules in early August, when the Senate left for a monthlong recess after a breakdown in bipartisan negotiations over the confirmation process and Trump told Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to “GO TO HELL!” on social media.
Naturally, the Democrats are framing this as “oh, boy, just wait until we are in charge again.”
Senate Democrats have defended their slow-walking of Trump’s picks, with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling them “historically bad.” They view the rules change as the latest instance of Republicans bending to Trump — and also a move that could benefit them the next time Democrats control the White House and Senate.
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“One of the most important checks on executive power, given to the Senate in the Constitution, is the power of consent for nominees to high executive office. It prevents a president from installing in power unqualified or corrupt people,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in a recent floor speech, adding that with the rules change Republicans “effectively gave that power up.”
This is nonsense. No Democrat Senate Majority Leader would’ve permitted the GOP to stall for over seven months in confirming a Democrat president’s minor nominees. More to the point, there is no instance of Republicans using this kind of maneuver even against the mental defectives that staffed the Biden administration.
Over 100 nominations remain to be confirmed; they will be finished over the next week.
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