Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be able to get judges and executive branch appointees confirmed much faster now.
The Kentucky Republican wasted no time in advancing his first batch.
Normally a batch of six nominees could take weeks to confirm, thanks to delay tactics Democrats have employed to stall some of President Trump’s judicial and executive branch picks.
But Republicans have significantly shortened the maximum time lawmakers can debate about them and, under the new precedent, debate could only take a few weeks.
Before adjourning the Senate on Thursday, McConnell lined up votes on four district court nominees, a sub-Cabinet pick, and the president’s designee to serve as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. And he plans to bring up more nominations Monday, a GOP aide told the Washington Examiner.
“We’ll clear those,” the GOP aide said of the half-dozen nominations on the Senate calendar next week.
Republicans, over the objections of Democrats, ended the traditional 30 hours of debate time allowed for district court judges as well as sub-Cabinet level appointees and ambassadors, and installed a new limit of two hours of debate after the first procedural vote on each.
“The Senate took an important step to restore sense and order to the way we approach the executive calendar,” McConnell said.
“It’s one of this body’s most important responsibilities. And yet, it’s been hampered recently by a campaign of systematic and comprehensive obstruction that stands without precedent in American history.”
McConnell has made confirming judicial nominees a top priority, and the shortened debate time will allow him to move swiftly to fix a gaping hole in his effort.
While McConnell has been able to move a historic number of Trump’s appellate court picks by prioritizing those nominees, district court nominations have lagged so far behind there are now significantly more vacancies than when Trump took office.
There were 125 district court vacancies when Trump first entered the White House, now there are 167.
That’s partly because debate time for just one nominee can eat up most of a Senate work week if Democrats insist on running out the 30 hours.
Now they can only delay for two hours for each nominee.
“It’s going to have a huge impact,” Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director at the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said of the reduced debate time.
Next week’s line up includes some long-stalled Trump picks.
Daniel Desmond Domenico, nominated to serve on the U.S. District Court in Colorado, has been waiting for confirmation since September 2017.
Trump nominated Patrick Wyrick in April 2018 to serve on the federal bench for the Western District of Oklahoma.
Holly Brady, nominated to serve on the bench for the Northern District of Indiana, and David Morales, picked to serve as U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Texas, has also been waiting a year for confirmation.
The United States has gone without an ambassador to Saudi Arabia for more than two years. Trump nominated John Abizaid, a retired four-star army general and former head of the U.S. Central Command, to serve as the ambassador to Saudi Arabia, relatively recently, in November 2018.
But Cheryl Stanton, who Trump picked to serve as administrator of the Wage and Hour Division for the Department of Labor, has been awaiting confirmation since September 2017.
Democrats condemned the move to shorten debate time and said it would prevent them from thoroughly vetting Trump nominees, some of whom they believe have been ill-suited or unqualified for the jobs the president has assigned to them.
Democrats are particularly eager to block Trump’s court picks, who they believe will skew the judicial system too far to the right.
“Underneath all the statistics, what Leader McConnell, President Trump, and Republicans in the Senate are trying to do is use the courts to adopt a far-right agenda that Republicans know they cannot enact through the legislative process,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said.
But Republicans point out they operated under the same shortened debate time when Democrats ran the chamber in 2013 and were eager to confirm President Barack Obama’s nominees more quickly.
In fact, Republicans voted with Democrats to make the change in a bipartisan accord the GOP had hoped to achieve this time around.
Democrats made good use of the faster pace. They filled four vacancies on the D.C. Circuit that had been held by Reagan appointees, reshaping one of the most powerful courts in the United States.
“Now there is a marked Democratic-nominee majority on that court,” Severino said. “It had a huge impact.”
