Republicans are growing impatient with the Senate’s pace in processing President Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominations, and they blame Democrats for the delay.
Technically, Senate minorities are no longer able to single-handedly block a confirmation vote for a presidential nomination, thanks to Democrats triggering the nuclear option in 2013 to lower the threshold for invoking cloture on all nominations (other than for the Supreme Court) from three-fifths of senators to a “majority-vote.” The 2013 nuclear option eliminated the supermajority filibuster for most nominations. Republicans followed suit in 2017, using the maneuver to eliminate the minority’s ability to filibuster Supreme Court nominees.
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