Summary
- The
Senate confirmed 48 Trump nominees in a single vote Thursday. - Used
the “nuclear option” to change confirmation rules. - Rule
change allows bulk approval with simple majority vote.
The 51-47 party-line vote validates numerous Trump
appointees for ambassadorial and sub-Cabinet posts. Among them are former Fox
News host Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece, former Representative
Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., as undersecretary of energy for nuclear security, and
Callista Gingrich, the former House speaker’s wife, as ambassador to
Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
It followed a simple majority decision by Senate Republicans
to repeal current regulations that require 60 votes to confirm nominees in
batches. With the support of centrist Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and
Susan Collins of Maine, the GOP’s attempt to go “nuclear”—the
euphemism for altering Senate rules on a party-line basis—was unanimous.
Despite their best efforts, Democrats were unable to resist
the rule change because they only held 47 members.
The 48 nominees nominated on Thursday are the first to be
confirmed since the rules were changed.
“This is a broken process, folks,”
Thune said in
the run-up to the vote series last week.
“That’s an embarrassment.”
For weeks, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., accused
Democrats of slow-walking and obstructing Trump candidates, including those at
lower levels who had some bipartisan support. He claimed that the Senate was
now dysfunctional as a result.
However, Democrats said Trump had put them under more
scrutiny after filling his administration with unfit followers, and they
refused to give the majority assent needed for nominees to bypass the customary
discussion and procedural obstacles.
“He didn’t deserve the benefit of the
doubt that has been given to such nominees by previous presidents,”
they
said.
“This is a sad, regrettable day for the Senate,”
he said
after the majority party made its opening salvo on the matter last week.
“And I
believe it won’t take very long for Republicans to wish they had not pushed the
chamber further down this awful road.”
The new rules empower the governing party to confirm an
unlimited number of selections in blocs, altering the confirmation process for
Trump and future presidents. The option is available for executive branch
nominees who are up for debate for two hours; they are usually lower-level
candidates, such as ambassadors and deputies. Cabinet nominees and aspiring
judges are exempt from it.
Republicans stated that if their own senators oppose a
nominee being included in a certain bloc, they will either try to resolve the
issue with the senator or remove the nominee from the group. But they won’t
treat the Democrats with the same decency.
What were the main reasons for Republicans’ push to change
confirmation rules?
A considerable backlog of approximately 150 of Trump’s
executive branch nominees were currently stuck in the Senate, hindering the
administration’s ability to appoint key officers to government jobs.
Republicans charged Senate Democrats with historically
extreme slow-walking tactics by using extended debate and individual votes to
block or delay confirmations.
The change in rules was considered a legitimate way to bring
the Senate back to the functional ability to quickly confirm nominees and not
become disorganized owing to long partisan disputes.
This action follows changes to Senate rules in 2013 and 2017
reducing filibuster protections against judicial and executive nominations
deemed the predictable next step by Republicans.
