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.
Honestly, the democratic brand is so tainted the the left really should embrace a strategy of running independents in solid red states. They’re receptive to a Bernie style message (tell them big Ag is trying to buy your farm, go big on right to repair so John Deere can’t screw you on parts, tell them that Medicare for all is actually good for small businesses that can’t compete on health care, etc), but after decades of right wing propaganda you can’t do anything under a democratic banner in those places (especially since the democratic party would put their thumb on the scale for the centrist guy in a primary).