Republicans are preparing to again “go nuclear” on the Senate’s rules. The fallout this time could be limited.
Majority Leader John Thune filed a list of more than 40 nominees Monday night on the Senate floor, the first step toward a vote to change the chamber’s rules later this week that would allow group confirmations for most executive branch picks.
It’s the latest chapter in a long-running partisan fight over the chamber’s norms, which has seen senators slowly whittle away at rules that once demanded bipartisan support for confirmation of presidential nominees.
While Democrats are warning that the decision to speed up approval of most of President Donald Trump’s nominees will come back to bite Republicans, the Senate does not appear headed toward the kind of bitter showdown that marked some of the previous nomination battles.
“I say to my Republican colleagues, think carefully before taking this step. If you go nuclear, it’s going to be a decision you will come to regret,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday.
The New York Democrat predicted Trump would push political boundaries even further with his nominees now that they will no longer be voted on individually. But his comments also served as a reminder that turnabout will be fair play under a Democratic president with a Democratic Senate majority.
Even as Schumer issued that warning, however, he reiterated Democrats are open to a bipartisan deal with Republicans on the biggest challenge Congress faces this month: funding the government. Lawmakers have until the end of the month to avoid a shutdown, and they are likely to pass a short-term spending patch to avoid a lapse in spending.
They’re juggling the nominations fight with other political fires, too. Democrats are trying to get a deal to extend federal health insurance subsidies that will expire at the end of the year. Schumer, in his floor speech Monday, also talked about Trump’s judicial nominees, which are not included in the rules change, as well as the economy, saying that the “S.S. Trump is sinking before our eyes” and that Republican lawmakers are still on the ship.
Asked Monday if Republicans would face repercussions for their power move on confirmations, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said that they would — but added it was an issue for “tomorrow.”
Democrats are effectively powerless to prevent Republicans from changing the rules so long as 50 GOP senators plus Vice President JD Vance can stick together. But they also view Republicans’ desire to return to an earlier era, when nominees were confirmed with little fanfare, as a fever dream out of touch with the Senate’s political reality.
“We’re living now under the shadow of the JD Vance rule,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), referring to the now-vice president’s opposition to former President Joe Biden’s U.S. attorney nominees when Vance served as an Ohio senator.
That opposition, Durbin said, prevented Biden “from filling vacancies and many Democrats still remember it. If we’re going to come up with rules, they’ve got to apply to Democrats and Republicans as well.”
Republicans retort that the current Democratic blockade goes well beyond a small subset of Trump nominees — they have withheld unanimous consent for virtually all of the president’s picks, leaving a backlog of roughly 150 nominees waiting to get a floor vote. Leadership got close to notching a confirmations deal earlier this summer, but it unraveled after the White House balked at Democrats’ asking price: unfreezing some agency funding.
The list Thune moved forward with Monday included 48 appointees that received at least some Democratic support in committee. They are mostly low- and mid-level nominees to executive agencies and departments, as well as some ambassadorships — including the nominations of Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s ex-girlfriend, and Callista Gingrich, former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s wife, as envoys to Greece and Switzerland, respectively.
The move toward group confirmations is only the latest tit-for-tat in a nearly two-decade escalation over presidential personnel. Democrats, under Harry Reid, got rid of the 60-vote threshold for most nominees under President Barack Obama. Republicans under Mitch McConnell followed suit for Supreme Court picks. And Republicans subsequently changed the rules to make it faster to confirm most lower- and mid-level picks — steps Democrats used to their own advantage during Biden’s presidency.
Even with the nomination fight heating up again, there have been limits. Cabinet nominees and federal judges are not included in the new group-nominations precedent Republicans want to set, and Durbin said late last week that he was talking with Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) about trying to find a more “rational and sensible way” to deal with some of that panel’s nominees. Durbin, the top Democrat on Judiciary, declined to provide further details.
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been any consequences for Republicans’ latest nuclear strike.
Grassley tried to clear a tranche of nominees Monday for a second time but was blocked by Democrats. Schumer blamed Trump for the impasse and offered to reopen negotiations if Republicans would drop their plans to change Senate rules.
“If Republicans are dead-set on going nuclear, we will not grant consent today,” Schumer said.
GOP senators are aware their actions could be used against them in the future, but they say the slow-walking happening right now leaves them little choice.
“You always think about when the shoe is on the other foot, and that is ultimately going to happen at some point,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the Republican whip, told reporters last week. “But we’re trying to get back to the way this has been previously.”
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