Senate Republicans went nuclear on Thursday, enacting a major change to the way the chamber confirms presidential nominees in response to Democrats’ unprecedented slow-walking of President Donald Trump’s picks.
The Senate will now be able to confirm an unlimited number of sub-Cabinet nominations simultaneously, which means Trump — and future presidents — can staff up much more quickly.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer panned the move as “an act of genuflection to the executive branch.”
Both parties acknowledge the chamber’s confirmation process has long been broken and the current trajectory is unsustainable. And both parties are to blame for the deterioration that led to this point.
As Republicans prepare to confirm the first batch of nominees under the new rules next week, here are five things we learned from the Senate’s latest nuclear episode.
Thune’s ‘tough guy’ era. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has a “nice guy” reputation. But Thune has embraced hardball tactics against Democrats all year. Thune also usually follows through when he’s threatened to employ them.
Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday night, Thune grew uncharacteristically heated in denouncing Democrats’ eleventh-hour attempts to negotiate a bipartisan agreement and fend off the nuclear option. Those talks fell apart.
Here’s what Thune told us in a brief interview after walking off the floor:
“The Dems are talking about loose numbers, don’t know what they want, keep changing the goalposts. So this is one of those never-ending, when Lucy moves the football type exercises. At some point, you just gotta fish or cut bait.”
Trump gets his way. Senate GOP leaders have so far protected key institutional prerogatives and levers of minority power — like the blue-slip tradition — in the face of Trump’s prodding. They’ve also committed to maintaining the legislative filibuster.
But with this rule change, Trump got what he wanted and faced little resistance from Senate Republicans — even after Trump blew up a bipartisan deal that would’ve seen dozens of his nominations confirmed before the August recess.
Schumer’s base play. Many of the nominations caught up in the backlog got Democratic votes in committee. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has justified the blanket slow-walking of Trump’s picks by arguing that “historically bad” nominees merit a “historical response” from Democrats.
It’s a clear play to the party’s base by Schumer. We’re in a political environment in which Democrats simply can’t help grease the skids for a single Trump nominee. That’s why it was hard to see Democrats agreeing to any sort of compromise on the GOP rules-change effort, even a modest one.
Shutdown tea leaves. While not directly related to the impending government shutdown, the bad blood stemming from the collapse of Thursday’s bipartisan negotiations will further exacerbate tensions heading into a key couple of weeks on FY2026 spending.
Democrats are already slamming Republicans for refusing to negotiate over their health care-related demands, and they said Thursday’s events were more evidence of GOP intransigence.
“They don’t really remember how to compromise,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told us. “That has been the story of this Congress. They have not demonstrated any real desire to work with us.”
Shoe on the other foot. Future Democratic presidents and Democratic-controlled Senates will benefit from this rules change — something Thune acknowledged.
It also renders obsolete a key leverage point for senators in the minority party: Placing a hold on a nomination to extract a concession. Democrats’ blanket holds, though, have already weakened the practice because it gives the White House no incentive to negotiate.
