Senate confirms 48 of Trump's nominees at once after changing the
chamber's rules
[September 19, 2025]
By MARY CLARE JALONICK
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has confirmed 48 of President Donald
Trump’s nominees at once, voting for the first time under new rules to
begin clearing a backlog of executive branch positions that had been
delayed by Democrats.
Frustrated by the stalling tactics, Senate Republicans moved last week
to make it easier to confirm large groups of lower-level, non-judicial
nominations. Democrats had forced multiple votes on almost every one of
Trump’s picks, infuriating the president and tying up the Senate floor.
The new rules allow Senate Republicans to move multiple nominees with a
simple majority vote — a process that would have previously been blocked
with just one objection. The rules don’t apply to judicial nominations
or high-level Cabinet posts.
“Republicans have fixed a broken process,” Thune said ahead of the vote.
The Senate voted 51-47 to confirm the four dozen nominees. Thune said
that those confirmed on Thursday had all received bipartisan votes in
committee, including deputy secretaries for the Departments of Defense,
Interior, Energy and others.
Among the confirmed are Jonathan Morrison, the new administrator of the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Kimberly Guilfoyle
as U.S. ambassador to Greece. Guilfoyle is a former California
prosecutor and television news personality who led the fundraising for
Trump’s 2020 campaign and was once engaged to Trump’s son, Donald Trump
Jr.
Thune’s move is the latest salvo after a dozen years of gradual changes
by both parties to weaken the filibuster and make the nominations
process more partisan. Both parties have obstructed each other’s
nominees for years, and senators in both parties have advocated for
speeding up the process when they are in the majority.
Republicans first proposed changing the rules in early August, when the
Senate left for a monthlong recess after a breakdown in bipartisan
negotiations over the confirmation process and Trump told Senate
Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to “GO TO HELL!” on social media.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is met by reporters as he
walks to his office while Congress works on a government funding
solution, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Democrats have blocked more nominees than ever before as they have
struggled to find ways to oppose Trump and the GOP-dominated
Congress, and as their voters have pushed them to fight Republicans
at every turn. It’s the first time in recent history that the
minority party hasn’t allowed at least some quick confirmations.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has said Democrats are
delaying the nominations because Trump’s nominees are “historically
bad.” And he told Republicans that they will “come to regret” their
action — echoing a similar warning from GOP Leader Mitch McConnell
to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in 2013, when Democrats
changed Senate rules for executive branch and lower court judicial
nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations. At the
time, Republicans were blocking President Barack Obama’s picks.
Republicans took the Senate majority a year later, and McConnell
eventually did the same for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 as
Democrats tried to block Trump’s nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch.
“What Republicans have done is chip away at the Senate even more, to
give Donald Trump more power and to rubber stamp whomever he wants,
whenever he wants them, no questions asked,” Schumer said last week.
Republicans will move to confirm a second tranche of nominees in the
coming weeks, gradually clearing the list of more than 100
nominations that have been pending for months.
“There will be more to come,” Thune said Thursday. “And we’ll ensure
that President Trump’s administration is filled at a pace that looks
more like those of his predecessors.”
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