Senate Republicans confirmed dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees with one vote Thursday, days after changing the chamber’s rules along party lines to allow group consideration for most executive branch picks.
The first bloc included 48 Trump nominees for midlevel executive branch positions and ambassadorships. Had they been processed individually, their confirmations would have eaten up weeks of floor time.
“If the Senate had continued at the pace that we’ve been proceeding at through the month of July there would still be hundreds of empty desks in the executive branch on President Trump’s last day in office in 2029,” Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Thursday.
Those confirmed Thursday include Kimberly Guilfoyle to be ambassador to Greece, Callista Gingrich to be ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and Brandon Williams to be undersecurity for nuclear security at the Department of Energy.
Guilfoyle is the ex-wife of California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and a former romantic partner of Donald Trump Jr., while Gingrich is married to former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Williams is a former Republican House member from New York.
The party-line rules change — known as the “nuclear option” inside the Senate — came after Republican frustration boiled over about the slow pace of Trump administration confirmations due to Democratic opposition to their expedited consideration.
Senate leaders and the White House engaged in negotiations over the summer about speeding up confirmations for a tranche of nominees in exchange for the administration’s agreeing to unfreeze certain agency funds. Those talks unraveled, however, and Trump sent Republicans home for the weekslong August break.
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.
The green light for group confirmations is the latest hammer senators have taken to the chamber’s handling of presidential nominees in recent years. In 2013, then-Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to lower the confirmation threshold for executive branch nominees and most judicial picks from 60 to 51. Republicans under Leader Mitch McConnell took the same step in 2017 for Supreme Court picks and then cut down on debate time for most other nominees two years later.
Senate Democrats, when they were in the majority under President Joe Biden, discussed changing the rules to allow for a limited number of nominees to be confirmed in groups. That plan never came to fruition, though, and the latest rules change enacted by Republicans doesn’t limit the number of nominees who can be confirmed at once. Cabinet picks and judges, however, are not eligible.
“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.”
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