Senate Republicans kicked off President Trump’s second term by confirming his Cabinet faster than any of the three previous administrations, but slogged through the processing of lower-level nominations amid an unprecedented Democratic blockade.
Now, Republicans are ending 2025 having confirmed 417 of Mr. Trump’s civilian nominees, thanks to their Senate rule change allowing a simple-majority vote to advance an unlimited number of nominees as a group.
That’s more than the 365 civilian nominees confirmed in the first year of the Biden administration. It also exceeds the 323 nominees the Senate confirmed in 2017 at the start of Mr. Trump’s first term.
“One of our priorities this year has been ensuring that the president has his team in place so that he can do the job the American people elected him to do,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said in a floor speech before the chamber adjourned for the year.
He said Democrats dragged out the process of confirming Mr. Trump’s nominees “out of petty partisanship,” but Republicans did not let that stop them from getting the job done.
Thanks to their rules change, Republicans virtually eliminated the backlog of hundreds of committee-approved nominations that piled up awaiting floor action throughout the year.
More than half of Mr. Trump’s second-term civilian nominees, 252, were confirmed in three “en bloc” packages after the rules change.
The 60% of nominees confirmed under the rules change is comparable to the percentage of nominees approved by voice vote in the previous two administrations — 57% under Mr. Biden and 65% in Mr. Trump’s first term.
Mr. Thune said Democrats’ obstruction of Mr. Trump’s nominees this year was “unlike we’ve ever seen in American history for any president of any political party.”
“President Trump remains the only president on record not to have had a single civilian nomination confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote,” he said, referring to his second term.
One of the Senate’s final acts of the year was confirming the third package of 97 nominees in a 53-47, party-line vote.
The Senate also voted to invoke cloture on four nominees whose confirmation votes will be held when the chamber returns in January.
Those four nominees are Keith Bass for assistant secretary of Defense, Joshua Simmons for general counsel of the CIA, Sara Bailey for director of the National Drug Control Policy and Alexander C. Van Hook for U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Louisiana.
Only 11 other civilian nominees who’ve gone through the committee process did not get floor votes by the end of the year. The White House will have to resubmit the nominations next year if they want to proceed with the confirmation process.
Those include three district judge nominees and four U.S. attorney nominees.
Mr. Trump has complained about the obstruction of those roles in particular. He’s repeatedly called for an end to the Senate blue-slip process in which home-state senators can block confirmation of U.S. attorney and district court nominees.
“Too many GREAT REPUBLICANS are being, SENT PACKIN’. None are getting approved!!!” the president said on social media earlier this month.
That’s not exactly true. The Senate did confirm four U.S. attorneys nominees who received blue slips from Democrats, according to Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican.
A total of 31 of Mr. Trump’s U.S. attorney nominees were confirmed this year, the same number as the first year of the Biden administration.
Mr. Grassley said Democrats’ opposition to the bulk of those nominees proves “their disdain for the safety and well-being of Americans.”
