Thune Plans to Change Senate Rules to Speed Up Trump’s Nominations

This refers to a significant political maneuver in the U.S. Senate. Here’s a breakdown of what this means, its context, and potential implications.

What is Happening?

Senator John Thune (R-S.D.), the Senate Minority Whip (the #2 Republican in the Senate), has announced his intention to push for a change to the Senate’s rules if Republicans regain the majority in the upcoming election. The goal of this change would be to drastically speed up the confirmation process for a potential President Donald Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees.

The Current Rules: Why It’s Slow

The current process for confirming presidential nominees is notoriously slow, by design. The Senate’s rules allow for extensive debate and procedural hurdles:

1. Committee Process: Nominees must first go through hearings and a vote in the relevant committee (e.g., the Judiciary Committee for judges).

2. Floor Debate: After committee approval, a nominee moves to the full Senate floor, where debate is theoretically unlimited.

3. Cloture: To end debate and force a final vote, a motion called “cloture” must be filed. Under current rules, this requires 60 votes to pass. This is the key hurdle.

4. Post-Cloture Debate: Even after cloture is invoked, there are still up to 30 additional hours of post-cloture debate allowed before the final, simple-majority vote.

This process means a single senator can delay a nomination for days, and a united minority party can block nominees they strongly oppose if the majority lacks 60 votes.

Thune’s Proposed Changes

While the specific details of Thune’s proposal may be finalized later, it would almost certainly aim to:

• Reduce or Eliminate Post-Cloture Debate: The most likely target is the 30-hour post-cloture debate period. Thune has suggested reducing this to a much shorter time frame (e.g., 2 hours) for most nominees.

• Streamline the Process: The change would make it so that once a nominee has the votes to pass cloture, the final confirmation vote would happen almost immediately, rather than after a day-plus of additional delay tactics.

The goal is not to change the 60-vote cloture threshold itself for nominations (that was already changed in 2013 and 2017), but to eliminate the tools used to drag out the process after cloture is invoked.

Context and Motivation: “The Grim Reaper”

This move is a direct response to the strategy employed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) during Trump’s first term.

• Democratic Strategy (2017-2020): Despite Republicans having a majority, Democrats used the Senate’s rules to slow-walk Trump’s nominees, consuming vast amounts of the Senate’s calendar and delaying confirmations.

• The “Legislative Graveyard”: Schumer earned the nickname “The Grim Reaper” for refusing to bring House-passed Republican bills to a vote in the Senate. This meant the Senate’s focus was often on confirming judges rather than passing legislation.

• Republican Frustration: Republicans viewed these delay tactics as obstructive. Now, they are planning a rules change to prevent a Democratic minority from employing the same strategy if Trump wins in 2024.

Potential Implications and Controversy

1. Faster Confirmations: This would allow a President Trump to fill judicial vacancies and cabinet posts at a much faster rate than during his first term, potentially reshaping the federal judiciary more quickly.

2. Further Erosion of Senate Norms: This would be another step in the long-standing trend of the majority party changing rules to overcome minority obstruction (a process often called the “nuclear option”). It further moves the Senate away from its traditional role as a deliberative body.

3. Hypocrisy Accusations: Critics will accuse Republicans of hypocrisy. In 2013, Democrats (then in the majority) eliminated the 60-vote filibuster for executive branch and most judicial nominees to overcome GOP obstruction. In 2017, Republicans extended that to Supreme Court nominees to confirm Justice Gorsuch. Each party decries the other’s actions when in the minority.

4. A Double-Edged Sword: The change would also apply when Republicans are in the minority. If Democrats later regain the White House and Senate, they could use the new, faster process to confirm their own nominees with minimal GOP input or delay.

In essence, Thune’s plan is a preemptive strike against expected Democratic obstruction. It reflects the intensely partisan and procedural battles that define the modern U.S. Senate and highlights how the confirmation process for key government officials has become a central front in the political war.