{"id":11777,"date":"2025-07-29T12:02:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T12:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-trump-confirmations-split-senate-dems\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T12:02:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T12:02:40","slug":"capitol-agenda-trump-confirmations-split-senate-dems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-trump-confirmations-split-senate-dems\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Trump confirmations split Senate Dems"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is staring down a confirmation backlog of more than 130 nominees \u2014 with President Donald Trump pressing hard for progress this week. Democrats could theoretically help expedite a pre-recess flurry of confirmations, but without more details from Republicans, they are so far holding out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some that are bipartisan \u2014 like, Tim Kaine and I have a great Eastern District of Virginia [U.S.] attorney nominee,\u201d Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told Blue Light News Monday evening. \u201cBut [Republicans] also should go and release some of the funds that have already been appropriated that they and [Russ] Vought are holding on to. There has to be some exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) managed to get her own deal during a committee vote last week. The Trump administration committed to distributing $75 million<\/a> in \u201clifesaving\u201d global assistance in exchange for the Foreign Relations ranking member\u2019s vote to advance Mike Waltz\u2019s UN ambassador nomination.<\/p>\n

Thune\u2019s hoping to strike a deal to fast-track dozens of confirmations through a mix of roll call votes, voice votes and\/or unanimous consent requests. But Democrats could force him to file cloture on each nominee, which would in turn force Thune to keep the Senate in session into the weekend \u2014 and potentially beyond.<\/p>\n

Democratic leaders are keeping all options on the table as they await a proposal from Republicans, one person granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations told Blue Light News. Some Democratic senators like Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin aren\u2019t ruling out confirming a tranche of Trump nominees \u2014 though they say it depends who they are.<\/p>\n

Other Democrats are opposed to any dealmaking at all: \u201cJust to try to help them advance getting more people in office?\u201d Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told Blue Light News. \u201cWhy would we do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

The unspoken truth: Many Democratic senators want to start their summer break just as badly as their Republican colleagues do.<\/p>\n

What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014 Appropriations status:<\/b> The wheels could be coming off Thune\u2019s plans to assemble an initial \u201cminibus\u201d of fiscal 2026 spending bills. Thune acknowledged to Blue Light News that he is still “trying to work off some holds” from senators objecting to bundling the various bills. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) became the latest headache, citing language in the agriculture bill that he said would \u201cdestroy\u201d the hemp industry.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Guardrails on TSA facial recognition: <\/b>Industry lobbying is threatening the smooth advancement of a bill that would put guardrails on the Transportation Security Administration\u2019s use of facial recognition technology as Senate Commerce prepares to take up the bill Wednesday. It’s causing some consternation among Republicans, who had planned for a straightforward markup of the strongly bipartisan bill sponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and several committee Republicans.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Bove\u2019s confirmation vote:<\/b> A third whistleblower met with the staff for Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley on Monday to testify against Emil Bove, Trump\u2019s contentious nominee for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Republicans are expected to confirm Bove this week despite the new allegations but haven\u2019t officially locked in a time for the final vote.<\/p>\n

Jordain Carney and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is staring down a confirmation backlog of more than 130 nominees \u2014 with President Donald Trump pressing hard for progress this week. Democrats could theoretically help expedite a pre-recess flurry of confirmations, but without more details from Republicans, they are so far holding out. \u201cThere are some that are bipartisan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}