Congress
Senate confirms largest bloc yet of Trump nominees
Senate Republicans confirmed more than 100 nominees Tuesday evening, largely clearing the backlog of President Donald Trump’s picks who have been awaiting a floor vote.
The party-line vote comes after Senate Republicans changed the rules last month to allow most executive branch nominees to be confirmed as a group, whereas lawmakers previously had to hold a vote on each one. The change does not include Cabinet picks or judges.
This latest bloc represents the biggest number of nominees Republicans have cleared at once since the rules change. It includes former GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker and Sergio Gor, ex-director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, to be ambassadors to the Bahamas and India, respectively.
Republicans ultimately deployed the “nuclear option” — meaning a party line rules change — amid growing frustration about the slow pace of confirming Trump nominees amid widespread Democratic opposition.
Republicans briefly debated allowing Donald Trump to make recess appointments, which would let the president bypass the Senate on nominees when the Senate is not in session. So far, Republicans have held back over concerns that it would come back to bite them the next time they are in the minority.
A group of Senate Democrats are rolling out a bill Thursday to cut funding from the White House budget office any time a president uses taxpayer dollars to pay for anything considered political “propaganda.”
The legislation led by Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, is unlikely to clear Congress unless Democrats win control of the House and Senate in the midterms. But the language could eventually be included in annual government funding bills and serves in the meantime as a way for Democrats to press their GOP counterparts on President Donald Trump’s ongoing use of federal funding to air campaign-style ads commending the president and his offensive against Iran.
“Congress cannot sit on its hands,” Murray said in a statement, noting that lawmakers in both parties have said in recent days that they oppose the taxpayer-funded ads the Trump administration is defending as “public service announcements.”
The bill would dock the budget of the Office of Management and Budget by $20 million every time an administration violates existing law barring the use of federal funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” The head of the Government Accountability Office would be charged with determining if such a violation has occurred.
Lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump’s move to cancel $810 million in congressionally approved spending are piling up in courtrooms throughout the country as states and groups that receive federal dollars fight to keep the cash flowing.
In the final hours before the fiscal year ended late Wednesday, a half-dozen states went to federal court to challenge Trump’s latest use of a controversial “pocket rescission.” A group that helps students from migrant families go to college also filed suit, trying to preserve about $25 million in education funding Trump is seeking to claw back.
At least one federal judge so far has been sympathetic to arguments that Trump’s move, which essentially runs out the clock on Congress’ right to evaluate and potentially reject funding clawbacks, could be illegal: U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled late Wednesday to delay the expiration of $56 million for housing support services, temporarily blocking Trump from canceling the money.
The flurry of legal action comes as many lawmakers on Capitol Hill clamor for the courts to strike down Trump’s action as an illegal and unconstitutional encroachment on Congress’ power to dictate how federal cash is spent.
But the fresh lawsuits will not necessarily prompt a sweeping ruling from the Supreme Court, which allowed Trump to go ahead last year with withholding $4 billion he canceled through the same budget tactic. The high court argued in that brief unsigned order that the Trump administration had made a strong argument that outside groups may not have legal standing to sue under the decades-old impoundment law.
In the lawsuit Wednesday by six states, the suing parties argue that the president has not only flouted that 1970s law, but also the Constitution and the annual funding bills Congress has enacted over the last year.
The group suing over the cancellation of funding for educating students from migrant families laid out similar arguments, contending that the Trump administration has violated the First Amendment by discriminating based on “protected speech, expressive activities, and viewpoints that are irrelevant to funding or activities” the programs support.
Cobb’s decision, meanwhile, is only temporary. She explained in an emergency order Wednesday that she acted because the suing groups “would lose out on significant amounts of funding due to allegedly unconstitutional actions.”
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
Democratic efforts to revamp the Supreme Court gained momentum Thursday as an influential center-left think tank released a plan to limit justices’ terms and misconduct.
Third Way’s proposal, shared first with Blue Light News, highlights growing unity across the ideological spectrum in the Democratic Party for significant changes to the high court as Americans’ trust in the institution hovers at historic lows.
The group says it also wants to inject ideas to overhaul the court — including legislation to set an 18-year term limit and an enforceable ethics code — into the party’s conversations leading up to the 2028 presidential race.
“This is one of those things that we think can and should be a part of the 2028 discussion, and those folks who are running should be asked about whether they would champion Supreme Court reform,” Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at Third Way, said in an interview.
Key Democratic groups have increasingly been coalescing around ideas to overhaul the court’s structure and policing in light of accusations of growing partisanship and corruption among justices. In June, a number of key Democratic House caucus leaders, including the Congressional Progressive Caucus, released their own resolution calling for term limits for justices and a code of ethics.
“We think that the center left has been remiss in not being forward enough on reform proposals that would make our system work better for people, which is why some folks have gone to the further left,” Erickson said.
Third Way cited public opinion polling from both the Brennan Center for Justice and FOX News indicating more than 70 percent of respondents favored term limits for justices. An 18-year cycle would ensure the appointment of two justices every presidential term.
The group also wants legislation to hold justices accountable for ethics violations. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last month he supports “dramatic reform” on the Supreme Court starting with an ethics code so justices don’t act “above the law.”
The court in 2023 adopted its own formal ethics code for the first time in history, but that policy largely lacks some of the teeth that advocates have proposed.
One idea supported by some Democrats that Third Way is not endorsing: upping the number of justices on the bench. Erickson said that idea seems more like “a mutually assured destruction path,” as parties could go back and forth adding more justices.
The path forward for any court-focused legislation in Congress in the near future, however, is very slim without majorities in both chambers and control of the White House — something Third Way acknowledged.
Still, the group’s recommendations are meant “to show that the center left can also be bold and be addressing systemic problems to appeal to voters and their level of anxiety and anger about what’s happening right now,” Erickson said.
- Adam Hamilton on faith, Trump and the fight for Kansas
- New York grapples with kinks in $1B Medicaid system
- Top Democratic appropriator wants White House to pay for airing ‘propaganda’
- Barrage of lawsuits targets Trump’s funding cancellation
- ‘These guys are in a pickle’: Some Republicans spurn Trump on the campaign trail
- Democrats rethink their mail-voting strategy as voters grow wary
- Senate bipartisan permitting deal faces a House buzz saw
- Centrist Dem’s Supreme Court plan boosts momentum for revamp
- Republicans need Trump to turn out the base. Some candidates still don’t want him.
- Democrats’ mail-voting plans shift as officials work to reassure voters
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