The Senate Banking Committee is expected to vote this morning on President Donald Trump’s nomination of Stephen Miran to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The vote is important — if Miran is confirmed, President Trump will have one more pro-interest rate cut voice on the board — but it is not the only nominations-related fight we will see on Capitol Hill over the coming days and weeks.
As Roll Call reported, earlier this week U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.Dak.) “took the first procedural step toward changing the chamber’s rules to speed up the confirmation of lower-level Trump [administration] nominees, saying the move is necessary to combat obstruction from Democrats.”
Majority Leader Thune and his fellow Republicans may use the so-called “nuclear option” to enact their desired change.
Republicans’ attempt to change the rules surrounding nominations is hardly the first time Senate leaders have altered the procedure for considering executive branch or judicial nominees. Along with looking at what changes Majority Leader Thune wants to make right now, this week we examine the history of Senate nominations rule changes.
But first, what is the “nuclear option”?
What Is The Senate’s Nuclear Option?
As Brookings Institution scholar Sarah A. Binder explained in 2017, U.S. Senate rules “offer the minority party the chance to challenge, delay, and sometimes derail the majority party agenda.” The requirement that three-fifths, or 60 senators, must agree on certain matters is one way the chamber’s rules have ensured the minority’s voice gets heard.
The nuclear option is a mechanism to change Senate rules or overturn precedent by a simple majority vote, rather than the 60-vote requirement typically needed.
There are four steps to invoking the nuclear option:
- A senator raises a point of order challenging a specific Senate rule or procedure that would normally require a three-fifths majority to change.
- The Senate’s presiding officer, a post usually filled by the vice president of the United States or a senator, rules on the point of order based on the existing Senate rules and precedents.
- Any senator may then appeal the presiding officer’s rule.
- Members of the Senate vote to abide by or overturn the ruling. To be successful, the appeal of the ruling needs a simple majority vote. If the appeal wins, that decision overturns the presiding officer’s initial ruling and establishes a new precedent, changing the rule for that and future situations.
“The ‘nuclear’ designation comes from the expectation that the other party will be upset and find other ways to make tasks very difficult for the majority party,” Binder concluded.
Sen. Thune’s Plan To Change Senate Rules
As NBC News explained, Senate Majority Leader Thune wants to change Senate rules to speed up confirmation of lower-level executive branch nominees. He would do this by confirming the nominees in batches. More specifically, the majority leader’s resolution would group dozens of nominees, potentially up to 48 or more, into a single, majority vote.
The proposed change would apply to executive branch nominees such as sub-Cabinet officials, ambassadors, and U.S. attorneys. However, it would not allow the Senate to consider every single member of the president’s Cabinet — from the U.S. attorney general to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor — with one vote.
In a speech on the Senate floor on Monday, Majority Leader Thune said the change was necessary because Democrats have been deliberately slowing the pace of executive branch confirmations. As evidence, he noted that in President Trump’s eight months in office, the Senate has not confirmed a single civilian nominee by voice vote. (In the Senate, a voice vote is a rapid, unrecorded method of voting by which the presiding officer asks senators to respond “yea” or “nay” in unison. It is most often used for non-controversial measures and to speed up Senate business.)
The Senate’s lack of voice votes for nominees stands in contrast to what happened for the nominees of other recent presidents. Majority Leader Thune explained that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama each had 90 percent of their civilian nominees confirmed by voice vote, for example. In President Donald Trump’s first term, and in President Joe Biden’s single term, more than 50 percent of civilian nominees were approved by voice vote, he said.
“It’s time to take steps to restore Senate precedent and codify in Senate rules what was once understood to be standard practice, and that is the Senate acting expeditiously on presidential nominations to allow a president to get his team into place,” Majority Leader Thune said on the Senate floor.
The Senate plans to take up the majority leader’s resolution tomorrow and use the nuclear option to change the chamber’s rules. If his effort is successful, Republicans plan to seek approval of a batch of 48 nominees next week.
Democrats oppose the current move to change Senate rules, of course… but it should be noted they too have leveraged the nuclear option in the past.
How Often Has The Nuclear Option Been Used To Change Nominations Rules?
The bipartisan nonprofit No Labels outlined the history of the nuclear option in an article published yesterday. The nuclear option has been used two times to change the method for approving executive branch or judicial nominations. The first time was in 2013.
But the term “nuclear option” was first used well before that.
“Republican leader Trent Lott first coined the term ‘nuclear option’ in spring 2003 while describing a rule change to ban filibusters on judicial nominees,” No Labels explained. “Senate Republicans were angry that Senate Democrats were filibustering many of the federal judges nominated by President Bush.”
The fight about nominees went on for two years — it was an issue in the 2004 presidential and congressional elections — but Majority Leader Lott never actually leveraged the nuclear option, however. That is because in 2005, a bipartisan “Gang of 14” led by the late Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) stopped the majority leader from going forward with his plan. He and 13 others (six Democrats and seven Republicans) crafted a deal that allowed for votes on the stalled judicial nominees and also established a rule that future filibusters would only be permitted under “extraordinary circumstances.”
The nuclear option was invoked eight years later on November 21, 2013 by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). As No Labels explained, citing “unprecedented obstruction” by Senate Republicans to block President Obama’s nominees, Senate Majority Leader Reid called for a simple majority vote to change the rules and eliminate the filibuster on all executive and judicial branch nominees except for Supreme Court justices.
The effort was successful, but it opened the door to future changes as well. Indeed, on April 6, 2017, Republicans led by then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voted to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. The Senate confirmed Justice Neil Gorsuch by a simple majority the very next day.
Six years later, it was Democrats’ turn again. In 2023, Democrats argued Republicans were slow-walking Biden administration nominees by objecting to efforts to approve nominations via voice vote. They were right. “For several months in 2023, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville objected to every Defense Department nominee to protest the Pentagon’s abortion policies,” No Labels explained.
In an attempt to break the logjam, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) proposed a rule change to allow up to 10 nominees to be confirmed as a group (or “en bloc”) by a simple majority vote. (Sound familiar?) Her plan excluded cabinet officials, appellate judges, and Supreme Court justices, and required all 10 nominees to come from the same committee, No Labels noted.
Sen. Klobuchar’s attempt ultimately failed because of opposition from her own party. Because Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) did not want to change the rules, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) lacked the votes to trigger the nuclear option.
If Majority Leader Thune is successful in his bid to change the rules for groups of nominees, Republicans may well rue the day when Democrats use their own invention against them.