Posted on Friday, September 5, 2025
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by Shane Harris
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Last November, voters delivered a clear mandate to President Donald Trump to enact the agenda he had campaigned on over the preceding two years. But Senate Democrats are now weaponizing procedural tools and historic minority-party rights to block the President’s nominees from implementing that agenda. It’s time Senate Republicans stopped playing nice and stopped Democrats’ dangerous obstructionism.
Alabama Senator Katie Britt highlighted the shocking success of Democrats’ gridlock strategy in an X post this week. “You may have heard [the President’s] frustration his nominees aren’t getting confirmed fast enough,” Britt wrote. “I knew it was bad, but I was shocked at the scale of obstruction by Senate Democrats after digging into the history of Senate confirmations.”
As she went on to relay, the second Trump administration is on pace to confirm the fewest nominees of any president in history. “By the end of the 119th Congress (1/2/2027), the Senate is on track to confirm just 426 nominees, the fewest in history, and less than half of what other Presidents have averaged since 2000,” Britt reported.
If the current pace continues through to 2028, Trump will have just 872 nominees confirmed, compared to 1,233 during his first term. Over the same four-year time frame, the Senate confirmed 1,175 Biden nominees and 1,489 Obama nominees.
How are Democrats managing to gum up the confirmation process while still being firmly in the minority? By abusing longstanding Senate rules allowing the minority party to slow down debate – rules that Senate Republicans could modify or abolish entirely with a simple majority vote.
Specifically, Democrats are hammering the filibuster and blocking voice votes and unanimous consent agreements to slow down the workings of the Senate as much as possible. As Britt again relays, 137 Trump nominees have been subject to cloture, which means they can be filibustered. That’s nearly double the 71 nominees subject to cloture throughout the first 200 days of the Biden administration.
Even more astonishingly, Democrats have not allowed a single Trump nominee through via voice vote or unanimous consent agreements, which is how the vast majority of presidential appointees are typically confirmed. Until Trump’s first term, “every President in modern history confirmed 90 percent or more of nominees via voice vote or unanimous consent.” During Trump’s first term, that number dropped to 65 percent – now it is zero.
As I wrote last month, Democrats are also abusing the so-called “blue slip,” which allows senators to effectively veto some nominees from their home state. While not legally binding, the practice has historically given individual senators significant influence over judicial appointments in their states.
The 100-year-old practice is predicated on the notion that each state’s senators are best qualified to say if a nominee is unfit for office. But in our modern era of hyper-partisan congresses, it has become just one more way for Democrats to undermine a duly-elected president – and by extension usurp the will of the American people.
Democrats can’t block Trump’s nominees entirely, but they can bog down the process to the point where so few nominations get through that it affects the administration’s ability to govern. They are deploying an “obstructionist nuclear option” of sorts that demands an answer.
So far, however, Senate Republicans have been woefully slow to respond, wasting valuable time as the midterms barrel closer.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has refused to abolish or curtail the blue slip practice – despite having warned in 2017 that “we should not allow home-state senators to abuse this courtesy by attempting to block committee proceedings for political or ideological reasons.” Grassley has been a staunch conservative and a strong ally of President Trump in the Senate, tireless work for which he deserves immense credit. But now he must recognize that Democrats are taking advantage of his reverence for tradition to undermine the President.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has also refused to allow Trump to make recess appointments – another tool Republicans could easily deploy to outfox Democrats.
It is far from guaranteed that the GOP retains control of the Senate in 2026, meaning that Republicans could have just 17 months left in power. Given how Democrats are acting in the minority, Republicans can be sure that they will confirm as few of Trump’s nominees as possible after January 2027 if they do win back control.
There are some signs that Republicans are finally beginning to wake up to this burgeoning crisis. Senator Britt has vowed that Senate Republicans “will end this historic obstruction of President Trump’s team and find a pathway forward.”
Politico has also reported that Republicans are considering a rule change to allow multiple nominees – potentially as many as 10 – to be confirmed with one vote, which would dramatically speed up the process. But at least one Republican, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, has said he wouldn’t support that move. Democrats need to peel off just three other GOP senators to block any proposed rule changes.
Senate Republicans have a narrow window to deliver on the mandate voters gave them to confirm nominees that can carry out President Trump’s agenda. Now is the time to act boldly, modernize outdated rules, and ensure the President has the full team he needs to govern effectively.
Shane Harris is the Editor in Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
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