Congress
Senate GOP confirms 48 Trump nominees under ‘nuclear’ move
Senate Republicans confirmed dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees with one vote Thursday, days after changing the chamber’s rules along party lines to allow group consideration for most executive branch picks.
The first bloc included 48 Trump nominees for midlevel executive branch positions and ambassadorships. Had they been processed individually, their confirmations would have eaten up weeks of floor time.
“If the Senate had continued at the pace that we’ve been proceeding at through the month of July there would still be hundreds of empty desks in the executive branch on President Trump’s last day in office in 2029,” Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Thursday.
Those confirmed Thursday include Kimberly Guilfoyle to be ambassador to Greece, Callista Gingrich to be ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and Brandon Williams to be undersecurity for nuclear security at the Department of Energy.
Guilfoyle is the ex-wife of California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and a former romantic partner of Donald Trump Jr., while Gingrich is married to former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Williams is a former Republican House member from New York.
The party-line rules change — known as the “nuclear option” inside the Senate — came after Republican frustration boiled over about the slow pace of Trump administration confirmations due to Democratic opposition to their expedited consideration.
Senate leaders and the White House engaged in negotiations over the summer about speeding up confirmations for a tranche of nominees in exchange for the administration’s agreeing to unfreeze certain agency funds. Those talks unraveled, however, and Trump sent Republicans home for the weekslong August break.
Senate Democrats have defended their slow-walking of Trump’s picks, with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling them “historically bad.” They view the rules change as the latest instance of Republicans bending to Trump — and also a move that could benefit them the next time Democrats control the White House and Senate.
The green light for group confirmations is the latest hammer senators have taken to the chamber’s handling of presidential nominees in recent years. In 2013, then-Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to lower the confirmation threshold for executive branch nominees and most judicial picks from 60 to 51. Republicans under Leader Mitch McConnell took the same step in 2017 for Supreme Court picks and then cut down on debate time for most other nominees two years later.
Senate Democrats, when they were in the majority under President Joe Biden, discussed changing the rules to allow for a limited number of nominees to be confirmed in groups. That plan never came to fruition, though, and the latest rules change enacted by Republicans doesn’t limit the number of nominees who can be confirmed at once. Cabinet picks and judges, however, are not eligible.
“One of the most important checks on executive power, given to the Senate in the Constitution, is the power of consent for nominees to high executive office. It prevents a president from installing in power unqualified or corrupt people,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in a recent floor speech, adding that with the rules change Republicans “effectively gave that power up.”
Congress
DHS stopgap set for quick House action after Rules Committee vote
The House Rules Committee advanced a measure Friday evening that would fund the entirety of the Homeland Security Department through May 22 — without setting up debate or a separate vote on the funding bill itself.
The panel, after a raucous meeting that devolved into shouting at multiple points, voted 8-4 on party lines to advance the measure to the floor.
The rule includes a “deem and pass” provision, a tactic that allows legislation to be passed by the House automatically once the rule itself is adopted. While there will be one hour of floor debate and a vote on the rule, there will not be a standalone House vote on the DHS spending bill.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) described himself as needing “a neck brace” from the whiplash of hearing Republicans argue for hours that the Senate’s early-morning voice vote on a different DHS funding measure was “shameful” for lack of transparency and accountability.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) accused the Senate of moving their bill “in the middle of the night, with the smell of jet fumes in the air,” lamenting that the House was left “to take it or leave it.”
House leaders, McGovern suggested, have chosen a similar path by fast-tracking the eight-week DHS stopgap.
“You’re in charge,” he told Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). “You can do whatever the hell you want to do.”
Congress
Rand Paul weighs a 2028 presidential bid
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is considering a bid for president in 2028, as Republicans jockey for the future of the GOP post-Trump.
In a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview airing Sunday, a reporter asked Paul about an article that implied he would be running for president.
“We’re thinking about it,” Paul said. “I would say fifty-fifty,” adding that he would make a final decision after the midterm elections.
Paul ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 with a libertarianism-focused campaign but ultimately dropped out after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses and a shortage of cash. He instead ran for reelection to the Senate.
Paul has had a complex relationship with his own party and with President Donald Trump, often finding himself the lone Republican on certain issues. More recently, he was the only Republican to support a joint resolution that would limit Trump’s war powers in Iran.
His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, also ran for president three times: first as a Libertarian in 1988, and twice as a Republican in 2008 and 2012.
Congress
‘Meltdown’: DHS shutdown set to drag on after House GOP rejects Senate deal
House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.
Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and certainly won’t pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.
But Johnson said House Republicans simply could not swallow the Senate bill, which omits funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol and some other parts of Customs and Border Protection.
“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”
The move toward an eight-week stopgap creates a tactical gulf between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who called an end to weeks of abortive bipartisan talks Thursday and pushed through the funding bill in hopes of tacking on funding later for ICE and CBP in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.
President Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the GOP infighting on Capitol Hill, keeping his criticism trained on Democrats. He ordered DHS to pay TSA officers Thursday as long security lines snarls more U.S. airports.
Johnson played down the split with his Senate counterpart, saying the Democratic leader there bore more blame for the impasse.
“I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate. I have to protect the House. … Our colleagues on this side understand this is not a game. We are not playing their games.”
Thune said early Friday morning he did not speak directly to Johnson in the final hours leading up to the Senate’s voice vote, but he said they had texted. He acknowledged he did not know in advance how the House would handle the Senate bill.
“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” he said.
Johnson made his game plan clear with House Republicans on a private call just minutes before addressing reporters in the Capitol, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call. He warned that a failure to advance the short-term DHS stopgap would upend GOP plans for a reconciliation bill, the people said.
He suggested the Senate could quickly clear the stopgap measure once it passes the House. Most senators have left Washington for a recess running through April 13, but Johnson said the chamber could approve the House measure by unanimous consent at a planned pro forma session Monday.
But some House Republicans on the private call, including Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, aired doubts it could pass the Senate — or even the House. Some fellow GOP centrists argued that the House should just swallow the Senate bill and end the standoff.
The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.
The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”
Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”
A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.
Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.
The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.
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