Senate Republicans took a significant step this week towards addressing the backlog of nominees put forward by President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, the GOP confirmed 49 of Trump’s nominees, meaning that 60% of his civilian nominations are now finalized.
This marks the fourth time Republicans have confirmed a group of nominees since the Senate altered its rules last year.
The latest batch includes 20 different positions, comprising a dozen U.S. attorneys, several U.S. marshals, ambassadors, and members from various agencies, including the Departments of War, Transportation, and Energy, among others.
Also among the nominees is Stevan Pearce, Donald Trump’s selection to lead the Bureau of Land Management.
Senate Democrats spent much of last year delaying or blocking confirmations for numerous nominees. Traditionally, many civilian nominees had been approved through unanimous consent or voice votes without requiring lengthy floor debates or roll-call votes.
Republicans accused Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats of obstructing confirmations to limit Trump’s ability to reshape the federal government around his policy agenda.
In response, Republicans invoked the so-called “nuclear option” for the fourth time in Senate history, changing chamber rules to lower the threshold for advancing certain nominations from the standard 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster to a simple majority vote.
The decision has been a good one, if not necessary.
Last year, the Senate confirmed over 400 of Trump’s nominees.
The confirmation pace also surpassed Trump’s first-term numbers during the same period, when the Senate confirmed 323 nominees during his first year in office.
It also exceeded the total reached by Joe Biden, who had 365 nominees confirmed over a comparable timeframe.
At the same time, Republicans have another major challenge this week.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday that he would soon introduce a bill that would give the government a short-term extension to its broad surveillance powers that were about to expire.
This comes as Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on who should lead the intelligence community.
The goal of the move is to keep Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s spy powers from ending on Friday.
However, congressional Democrats have already said they won’t support such an extension unless the White House withdraws Bill Pulte’s nomination as acting director of national intelligence.
The Senate has not been able to agree on anything for days because of the FISA program. This program lets intelligence agencies spy on foreigners living in the United States without a warrant.
Lawmakers against the spy powers have also spoken out because they think they could be used to spy on American citizens.
Trump’s choice of Pulte as head of U.S. intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard, caused the mess in the upper chamber.
Senate Democrats have called Pulte a political hack who shouldn’t be responsible for surveilling the government so much.
Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday afternoon that House Republicans didn’t have “a great deal of confidence” that the Senate would agree on extending FISA.
“They’re unable to pass it, and it’s a great regret, because Democrats in the Senate are playing political games right now with the lives of Americans,” said the top House lawmaker. “It’s a very dangerous situation.”
Johnson said House Republicans would bring up a short-term extension to FISA that would keep the program online until July 2, consistent with requests from the White House.
“FISA … is how we surveil terrorists who are trying to hurt Americans,” the House speaker said. “It’s a very important, vital national security tool. We cannot allow that to go dark.”
Johnson said the House would vote on the short-term extension Thursday morning.
It’s likely the chamber’s last chance for such a move — both the House and Senate are out of session next week for the Juneteenth holiday.
But House Democrats have already expressed their opposition to the plan.