Senate Republicans Go Nuclear on Presidential Nominees Again

The minority no longer gets a say in sub-Cabinet appointments.

Senate Republicans went nuclear on presidential appointments again on Thursday, September 11. Senators had been looking for a way out of using the so-called nuclear option on Wednesday, but a Democratic blockade against President Donald Trump’s sub-Cabinet nominees forced their hands. So, once more, the safeguards designed to keep the majority – any majority – from bulldozing over the minority in the upper chamber take another hit.

The Nuclear Senate

The 53-43 party-line vote came after negotiations stalled. The move allows Republicans to confirm nominees “en bloc,” which means from now on, a party-line vote allows numerous nominees to be confirmed at the same time. Democrats are apoplectic, of course, but they no longer really get a voice in the matter – for now. Of course, when the tables inevitably turn and Democrats again hold the majority, they’ll use this en bloc confirmation process just as mercilessly as the GOP will now, and they’ll love every minute of it while Republicans decry it as a breakdown of how the Senate is supposed to work.

This isn’t the first time the Senate has gone nuclear, of course. Back in the 1800s, an archaic legislative procedure called eliminating the previous question evolved into what we now call the filibuster. In the early 1900s, we got the creation of the cloture rule, which allows a two-thirds majority to invoke cloture – that is, force the end of a debate and the beginning of a final vote. The final vote requires only a simple majority, of course, but that two-thirds majority has to be achieved to actually reach it. In 1975, that cloture threshold was lowered to three-fifths, which, at the present Senate size, means 60 votes.

Today, the filibuster is a tactic used in the Senate to delay or block a vote on a bill or nomination by prolonging the debate – often through extended speaking, though that isn’t legally necessary. But there’s another option – colloquially called the nuclear option – whereby the majority party uses a non-debatable, simple-majority vote to overturn a Senate rule or precedent. It has been used several times by both sides of the aisle to reset the rules for certain issues, eliminating the need for cloture to break a filibuster.

It all began in 2013, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) invoked it to do away with the 60-vote filibuster threshold for most executive and judicial nominations, but left it in place for others – including the Supreme Court. Then, in April of 2017, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky invoked the nuclear option to remove the 60-vote hurdle to get Neil Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court. With yesterday’s addition of en bloc confirmations of sub-Cabinet level nominees to the simple-majority list, the filibuster now only applies to actual legislation – bills and resolutions.

Partisanship Pushes Partisanship

“This has to be fixed,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said on the Senate floor in his frustration at the situation. “We offered you a proposal that had your fingerprints on it. It wasn’t even your fingerprints, you initiated it.”

“It’s time to quite stalling … It’s time to fix this place,” Thune continued. The Republican plan that Democrats still rejected was based on offers made by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Angus King (I-ME) back in 2023. It would have allowed en bloc consideration for up to ten nominees. Now, however, by blocking any deal (even one of their own creation), Democrats have pushed themselves out of having any real say-so in the process – at least until they retake the Senate, in any case.