WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders laid the groundwork to make major procedural changes that would allow the party to approve President Donald Trump’s nominees en masse in hopes of breaking through a historic backlog created by Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., announced on Monday he would kick-start the procedural steps needed to change how judicial nominations are handled in the Senate, making it easier for Republicans to approve multiple candidates at a time to speed up the process. The move comes as Democrats have halted consideration for more than 100 nominees in protest of Trump’s policies.
“If Democrat obstruction continues, as Democrats have made it abundantly clear that it will, there is no practical way that we can come close to filling all the vacancies in the four years of this Administration no matter how many hours the Senate works,” Thune said in a floor speech on Monday. “So, this afternoon, I’ll be taking the necessary procedural steps to amend the rules.”
Doing so will require a procedure known as “going nuclear,” a rarely used maneuver that allows the majority party to change Senate rules with only a simple majority vote rather than the typical requirement of overcoming a filibuster with two-thirds approval. The nuclear option has not been used since 2019, but now sets a precedent for Republicans as they scramble to approve more than 100 judges who have been waiting at a standstill due to pushback from Democrats.
“President Trump’s nominees have faced unprecedented obstruction from Senate Democrats,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told the Deseret News in a statement. “For the first time in history, they have denied voice votes and unanimous consent for every single position requiring Senate confirmation, no matter how apolitical or uncontroversial. We are going to adopt a rules change, previously offered by our Democrat colleagues, that will enable larger batches of these nominees to be confirmed at once.”
Here’s how the “nuclear option” works and how Republicans hope to open the floodgates for Trump’s nominees.
What is the nuclear option and how does it work?
Going nuclear is a legislative procedure in the Senate that allows the majority party to override certain chamber rules with only a simple majority vote.
The so-called “nuclear option” is a veiled reference to nuclear weapons, often considered the most extreme option in any battle. In the same sense, going nuclear in the Senate has the risk of blowing up the chamber.
The nuclear option can be invoked by any senator when they raise a point of order on the Senate floor. At that point, the presiding senator would overrule the point of order because it violates current chamber rules — prompting an appeal that can be overturned with only a simple majority vote.
If passed, that rule is then the law of the land for the upper chamber.
Why are Republicans invoking the nuclear option?
The question of whether to change nomination rules has been under discussion by Republican senators over the last few months due to a backlog in nominees.
There are currently more than 130 judicial nominations waiting to be approved by the Senate that have been deliberately delayed by Democrats in revolt of Trump’s policies. Thune argued that if the Senate kept going down the current path of obstruction from Democrats, it would require 600 votes to clear the current backlog.
“To put that number in perspective, that’s more votes than this record-breaking Senate has taken all year,” Thune said. “We’ve got a crisis and it’s time to take steps to restore Senate precedent and codify in Senate rules what once was understood to be standard practice.”
The logjam has angered the president, and he’s repeatedly called on Senate Republicans to take any measure necessary to get them through.
If passed, Republicans want to establish precedent that would allow them to vote for Trump’s nominees in groups rather than one by one. Those rules would only apply to some nominees, however, and would exclude candidates for Cabinet-level positions or Supreme Court and appeals court judges.
Has it been used before?
Although not common, the nuclear option has been invoked a handful of times over the last few decades. Most recently, the nuclear option was used by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to reduce the required time for debate on most presidential nominees.
That passed in a 51-49 vote, with Lee as one of two Republicans to vote against.
How soon will the change take place and nominees be approved?
With Thune’s announcement on Monday, it tees up a final vote in the Senate as early as next week, he said.
Once the rule change is approved, Republicans can then move forward with packaging their nominees together and laying the groundwork to bring them to the floor for confirmation.
What do Democrats say?
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., decried Thune’s decision to invoke the nuclear option on Monday, arguing that Republicans and Democrats were previously negotiating “in good faith” to find a path forward on judicial nominations.
But instead of coming to an agreement, Schumer claimed, Republicans “would rather change how the Senate operates to weaken this chamber’s traditional and powerful sense of deliberation.”
Schumer railed against Trump’s nominees so far in his second term, and said that altering the Senate’s rules would mean “historically bad nominees we’ve seen under Donald Trump will only get worse”
“Think carefully before taking this step,” Schumer said. “If you go nuclear, it will be a decision you’ll come to regret.”