The Senate confirmed 48 of President Donald Trump’s nominees in a single vote on Thursday after the Republican majority triggered the “nuclear option” to make a far-reaching rule change.
The party-line vote of 51-47 confirms a slew of Trump picks for sub-Cabinet positions and ambassadors. They include former Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., as under secretary for nuclear security; former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece; and Callista Gingrich, wife of the former House speaker, as ambassador to both Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
It came after Senate Republicans voted to overturn existing rules with a simple majority to bypass the 60-vote threshold for confirming nominees in batches. The GOP effort to go “nuclear” — the term for changing Senate rules on a party-line basis — was unanimous, joined by centrist Sens. Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska.
Democrats voted at every turn to stop the rule change, but with only 47 seats, they didn’t have enough votes.
Thursday’s bloc of 48 nominees is the first to earn confirmation since the rules change.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., spent weeks accusing Democrats of unprecedented obstruction and slow-walking of Trump nominees, even lower-level ones with some bipartisan support. He said it had made the Senate dysfunctional.
“This is a broken process, folks,” Thune said in the run-up to the vote series last week. “That’s an embarrassment.”
But Democrats, who declined to grant the unanimous consent required for nominees to skip the usual debate and procedural hurdles, said Trump had brought the additional scrutiny on them after stocking his administration with unqualified loyalists. They said he didn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt that previous presidents have been granted for such nominees.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Trump has been choosing “historically bad nominees” — and warned that Republicans would regret their move.
“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 change the way that presidential nominees will be confirmed for Trump and future presidents, allowing the majority party to confirm an unlimited number of picks in blocs. The option applies to executive branch picks who are subject to two hours of debate, typically lower-level nominees, like deputies and ambassadors. It does not apply to Cabinet nominees or prospective judges.
Republicans said they will allow their own senators to object to a nominee included in any given bloc — and if that happens, they would either try to work out the hold with the senator or pull the nominee out of the batch. They will not grant that same courtesy to the Democrats, however.
It is the latest in a series of moves over the last 12 years that erode minority power in the Senate, a body that has historically granted individual senators unusual amounts of influence.
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