After leaving Washington, D.C., for the August recess last week without breaking a Democratic blockade on executive branch confirmations, Senate Republicans are now openly considering going nuclear.
According to The New York Times, the GOP is considering swift, unilateral changes to Senate rules to speed up the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s appointees this fall.
“I think there are going to be rules changes,” Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota told the outlet, calling the nominations standoff a “crisis.”
Notably, Rounds left open the possibility that his party would pursue these changes by force or through negotiations.
GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota
At the center of the debate is Democrats’ insistence on formal roll-call votes for nearly every executive branch nominee, which has stalled Trump’s efforts to fill dozens of top posts. In response, Republicans are contemplating removing procedural hurdles, like shortening the wait times between procedural and final votes, confirming multiple nominees at once, and reducing the number of positions requiring Senate approval.
“This is not going to stand for much longer,” warned Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
Cotton certainly isn’t one to talk. Under President Barack Obama, Cotton placed a hold on nominee Cassandra Butts—so long that she died before she could be confirmed.
The threat of a rules overhaul comes as Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government. A partisan escalation could undo the rare progress both chambers have made on spending bills.
It’s also not the first time that either party has considered nuclear options. Democrats did so in 2013 under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, lowering the vote threshold on most nominees after Republicans blocked Obama’s judicial picks.
The GOP followed suit in 2017, removing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees and paving the way for Trump to appoint three justices.
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Democrats again tried in 2022 to lower the bar for voting rights bills but were blocked by Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, moderates who forced Democrats to water down many bills and blocked more ambitious reforms throughout their time in Congress.
The Times reports that it remains unclear whether Republicans have the necessary votes to pass a nuclear measure. With only a slim majority, Majority Leader John Thune can afford to lose just three GOP senators—and some remain wary of breaking Senate norms.
Before recess, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Thune, and the White House tried to negotiate a deal to confirm 150 Trump nominees. Democrats offered to approve about 25 noncontroversial candidates in exchange for the White House releasing withheld funds—including $5 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $50 million for global AIDS programs, $142 million for UNICEF, and $300 million for Gaza humanitarian aid.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
After Republicans pushed for more confirmations, Democrats demanded a written promise that Trump wouldn’t seek more spending cuts before October, but negotiations collapsed. True to form, Trump responded on Truth Social, telling Schumer to “GO TO HELL!”
Then Thune adjourned the Senate, sending lawmakers home.
“We offered him very reasonable things,” Schumer said of Trump. “He got nothing and walked away with his tail between his legs.”
Republicans, in turn, claimed that Democrats also came up empty.
“They walked away without getting the additional funding they could have had with an agreement,” Rounds said.
Even as Democrats prolonged negotiations, Republicans managed to confirm about 2 dozen nominees before the recess, including some controversial picks, like Trump’s former lawyer Emil Bove for an appeals court and ex-Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as U.S. attorney for D.C.
Overall, Trump has secured 135 confirmations in his first six months back in office—just shy of Biden’s 150 during the same period in 2021. While about half of Biden’s picks passed by voice vote, Trump’s face roll-call votes one by one.
That’s precisely the obstruction Republicans aim to eliminate. The only question is, are they willing to break the rules to do it?
