Each week, Ballotpedia's election experts unpack the week's top political stories. Ballotpedia's here to give you the facts, so you can form your own opinion.
On this episode: Senate Republicans pushed through a major change to how presidential nominees are confirmed, lowering the threshold to a simple majority and allowing many nominees to be approved in large groups rather than one by one. The change applies to more than 1,200 positions across the federal government, including ambassadors, U.S. attorneys, and military appointments. Supporters argue it will speed up confirmations and prevent backlogs that can stall an administration’s agenda. Critics warn it weakens Senate oversight, sidelines the minority party, and chips away at institutional norms designed to protect bipartisan cooperation. Roll Call reporter Ryan Tarinelli joins host Norman Leahy to explain what exactly changed, why Republicans chose this moment to act, how the move fits into a decade of similar Senate rule fights, and what it might mean for the future balance of power in Congress.
There have been three other uses of the nuclear option in recent years, all of which affected how the confirmation process works in the Senate. In 2013, Senate Democrats used it to change the threshold to invoke cloture on non-Supreme Court nominations from 60 votes to 50 votes. The two other recent uses of the nuclear option occurred during Trump’s first administration. In 2017, Senate Republicans expanded Reid’s rule change from 2013 to include Supreme Court nominations. In 2019, Senate Republicans used the process to reduce the length of post-cloture debate on nominations from 30 hours to 2 hours.
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