Majority of Trump’s nominees still stuck in limbo

When Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were in office, the Senate rubber-stamped 98% of their nominees by the quick and easy process of unanimous consent. As political polarization has increased since then, the opposing party in the U.S. Senate has turned slow-walking presidential nominations into a sport.

Only 65% of presidential nominees were approved by unanimous consent during the first Trump administration. The ratio fell to 57% during the Biden administration. Now, nearly seven months into the second Trump administration, Senate Democrats have blocked every motion to approve nominees through unanimous consent.

“I really want to get work done, and I also have a real problem with a lot of these nominees,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told me. He is one of several Democrats voting “no” every time a Republican senator has asked for senators’ unanimous consent to bring a batch of nominees to a vote after they have cleared committee. Instead of using the consent process, which just one senator can object to, the chamber must go through nominees one at a time. Of President Donald Trump’s 362 political appointees nominated so far, only 109 have been approved.

Still waiting are hundreds of judicial nominees, deputy counsel positions, undersecretaries, assistants, inspectors at agencies, and special envoy positions.

The stalling tactic has become standard for the party out of power. In 2023, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., blocked unanimous consent on all military promotions requiring a Senate vote in protest of pro-abortion policies at the Pentagon. But Republicans complain Democrats’ current obstruction is not an even tit-for-tat because they are holding up presidential nominees, and, therefore, Trump’s agenda.

“We’ve never seen obstruction like this before, so I think it calls for something extraordinary,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told me.

The GOP has a few extraordinary options. The first would be to remain in session and forgo the traditional August recess, roughly five weeks of working in their home states during Washington’s hottest months. Trump floated this possibility on Saturday when he posted to Truth Social that lawmakers should not leave Washington until his pending nominees are confirmed.

But the August recess is a recess in name only. Traditionally, both chambers convene for pro forma sessions in which a member will briefly gavel the floor into session for a few minutes and then adjourn. That keeps the Capitol technically in operation every 10 days. If Congress truly recessed and did not gavel in, the president could have the authority to greenlight his own nominees without the Senate’s consent. Both parties want to avoid so-called recess appointments for different reasons.

“Even Senate Republicans, as committed as they are to making Trump’s nominees a success, also want these nominees to be coming through their offices, making commitments to them, sometimes commitments that are specific to their state interests,” Arizona State University professor Steven Smith told me. “Senators don’t want to lose that clout.”

Recess appointees may only serve until the end of that session of Congress, which means Trump would have to submit new names in 2027.

“I think there’s a lot of frustration on both ends of this,” Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., told me. He said Democrats do not oppose every nominee, but they do not trust the GOP not to sneak more controversial names into a unanimous consent batch. “If they’re going to just determine who is in the batch and just try to shove that down, that’s not going to work out for us.”

The standard process for approving nominees involves calling a name and debating for two hours before voting.

“We need to come up with a way to break that by expediting the vote on the nominees, and we're still sort of exploring what that would look like,” Cornyn said. “All we need is 51 senators to appeal the ruling of the chair on some of the current procedures to set a new precedent that would then allow us to expedite those votes.”

The third option to clear the logjam is to remove what’s called the “blue slip” requirement. The longstanding practice in the Judiciary Committee allows any senator from the same state as a judicial nominee to submit an opinion on that nomination. Waiting for the blue slip can slow down the confirmation process. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and said he is unlikely to revoke the courtesy, despite pressure from the White House.

“Chuck Grassley, who I got reelected to the U.S. Senate when he was down, by a lot, in the great state of Iowa, could solve the ‘blue slip’ problem we are having with respect to the appointment of highly qualified judges and U.S. attorneys with a mere flick of the pen,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday. He posted another graphic, titled “term limits,” pointing out that Grassley has been in the Senate for more than 50 years.

During a Senate Judiciary hearing on Wednesday, Grassley said he was surprised by Trump’s remarks.

“The people in real America don’t care about what the ‘blue slip’ is,” Grassley said. “But, in fact, it impacts the district judges who serve their communities and the U.S. attorneys who ensure law and order is enforced. … I was offended by what the president said, and I’m disappointed that it would result in personal insults.”

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, told me he is ready to stay for the rest of the summer, but he also wants to get around Democratic opposition even if it changes Senate precedent.

“There’s other ways to make your point and to slow things down, but this is over the top,” he said.