Senate Republicans confirmed nearly 100 of President Donald Trump’s nominees, leapfrogging previous administrations and his own first term in the process in their sprint to finish off the year.
The confirmation of 97 of Trump’s picks on Thursday with a 53-43 vote marked one of the final bits of floor action in the upper chamber following a blistering pace set out by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., once Republicans gained control of the Senate in January.
Senate Republicans overcame several obstacles throughout the year, including mending intra-party rifts to pass the president’s signature legislation, the ‘one big, beautiful bill,’ and reopening the government after the longest shutdown in history.
But it was confirming Trump’s nominees that proved near impossible within the confines of Senate rules, given that Senate Democrats laid out a blanket objection to even the lowest level positions throughout the government.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., noted that Republicans kicked off the year by confirming Trump’s Cabinet at a breakneck pace, but they soon slammed into a wall of ‘unprecedented obstruction from the Democratic minority.’
‘We began the year by confirming President Trump’s Cabinet faster than any Senate in modern history,’ Barrasso said. ‘And by week’s end, President Trump will have 417 nominees confirmed by the Senate this year. That’s far more than the 365 that Joe Biden had in his first year in office.’
In response, Republicans turned to the nuclear option in September and changed the vote threshold for confirming sub-Cabinet-level positions, and have since confirmed 417 of Trump’s picks.
Thune argued that Senate Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were engaging in ‘nothing more than petty politics,’ not allowing nominees through the typical fast-track processes, like voice votes or unanimous consent, to install low-level presidential nominations.
‘Democrats cannot deal with the fact that the American people elected President Trump, and so they’ve engaged in this pointless political obstruction in revenge,’ Thune said.
With the latest batch of confirmations, Senate Republicans have nearly cleared the backlog of nominees that over the summer had ballooned to nearly 150 picks awaiting lawmakers’ decision. Now, there are only 15 picks left to be confirmed.
Among the list of now-confirmed nominees are former Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., to serve as inspector general at the Department of Labor and two picks for the National Labor Relations Board, James Murphy and Scott Mayer, along with several others in nearly every federal agency.
Lawmakers are set to tee up another nominee, Joshua Simmons, who Trump tapped to be the CIA’s special counsel, before the night is over. And they’re still working to move forward with a colossal spending package that ties five appropriations bills together.
But some Senate Democrats are objecting to the minibus spending package, jeopardizing its chances of hitting the floor before lawmakers flee Capitol Hill. Conversations between Republicans and Democrats are ongoing, and could go deep into the night on a path forward.
Thune, as he walked onto the Senate floor Thursday night, said that the plan was to at least knock out the nominees package first.
‘We’ll see where it goes from there,’ he said.