Senate Republicans on Thursday confirmed 48 of President Trump’s nominees for various executive branch roles, using their new rules change to allow nominees to be confirmed in batches even when Democrats are filibustering.
The 51-47 vote confirming the four dozen nominees clears more than a fourth of the 173 nominees that have been reported out of committee.
The newly confirmed nominees include picks for important roles, like under secretary and assistant administrator, across multiple executive agencies, including the Defense, Energy, Interior and Labor Departments.
One such nominee is former Rep. Brandon Williams of New York, whom Mr. Trump nominated to serve as Energy undersecretary for nuclear security.
Eight of the nominees were confirmed to positions holding the rank of ambassador. That includes Kimberly Guilfoyle, the ex-fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., who will lead diplomacy in Greece, and Callista Gingrich, the wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who will serve in Switzerland after a previous stint as ambassador to the Holy See.
Republicans plan to move another group of nominees soon with the goal of clearing the remainder of the backlog by mid-October.
Democrats have filibustered all of Mr. Trump’s civilian nominees, except for their former colleague, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and required the Senate to jump through procedural hoops to confirm each pick individually.
The rules change that Republicans put into place last week allows them to confirm groups of sub-Cabinet executive nominees with a simple-majority vote, rather than holding individual votes on each nominee individually to overcome a filibuster.
They said the change was needed because Democrats have obstructed confirmations during this Congress at a level unprecedented for any modern presidency, including Mr. Trump’s first term.
Democrats have not allowed any of Mr. Trump’s civilian nominees, even those with bipartisan support, to be confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote, which is how the Senate would typically fast-track nominees for many lower-level positions.
“Republicans have fixed a broken process and restored the Senate precedent that applied to previous presidents – and that is allowing … a majority of a president’s nominees to be confirmed expeditiously,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in a floor speech Thursday ahead of the vote.
The South Dakota Republican said the 48 nominees were all reported out of committee with bipartisan support and reflect positions that would have been confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote in past administrations.
“So far this year, we have cast more than 500 votes here in this chamber. That’s more than any Senate in recent history at this point in a Congress,” Mr. Thune said. “But just to finish the nominees in the pipeline today would require another 600 votes if we considered them all individually – which is what Democrats have been forcing us to do since this president took office.”
Now Republicans can expedite that by clearing the remaining backlog of nominees with just a handful of votes.
