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Buckle your seatbelts: Republicans are poised today to invoke the nuclear option to change the rules for subcabinet-level executive and US district court nominees, to limit postcloture debate time from 30 hours to two hours
The Senate is voting now on cloture for Jeffrey Kessler, who is nominated for an assistant secretary of commerce post. Once they vote for cloture, it kicks off a 30-hour debate period. McConnell can then initiate the procedure to challenge that rule
Okay back to nominations: Cloture has passed for Kessler. Schumer is now talking, decrying the use of the nuclear option — he says Dems were prepared to give unanimous consent to Kessler, so cloture was unnecessary
Following another speech in defense of the rules change by McConnell, the Senate is now voting again
McConnell raised a point of order that under the rules, there are two hours of postcloture time for certain exec branch nominees. The chair basically said that under the rules, that's wrong. They're voting on whether to uphold that ruling — Rs are voting no, and Ds are voting yes
This is what it means when we talk about the "nuclear option" — using an appeal of a ruling by the chair on the current status of Senate rules to change the rules -->
So far two Republicans have sided with Dems in opposing the rule change on nominees, Collins and Lee. If one more Republican breaks ranks, there will be a tie and VP Pence would have to step in
NOW: Senate Republicans invoked the "nuclear option" to change the rules to make it easier to confirm Trump's nominees at a faster pace — they just voted to do it for most executive branch nominees, and are poised to do it for US district court nominees buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
The Senate is now moving on to Roy Altman's nomination for a federal district court seat in Florida. Once they vote on cloture, McConnell can again move to change postcloture debate time from 30 hours to 2 hours, this time for district court noms. Prev: buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
The Senate voted 66-33 on cloture for Roy Altman's nomination. McConnell made the point of order that the postcloture debate time for district court nominees is two hours, the chair says no (the current practice is 30 hours), McConnell appeals, and now it's going to a vote
(Deleted earlier tweet that had the wrong vote tally)
TLDR: The Senate is now voting on whether to cut the time for postcloture debate on US district court nominees from 30 hours to 2 hours. They voted earlier today to do this for subcabinet executive branch appointees buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
NOW: The Senate has voted 51-48 to speed up the time it takes to confirm Trump's nominees to the US district courts. This comes several hours after Republicans voted through a similar time change for subcabinet-level executive branch nominees buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
In sum: If there's a cloture vote on a nominee (that is, if Dems don't agree to go right to a final vote), there will now be two hours of debate before the final vote, instead of 30 hours — this will make it easier to confirm more nominees in a given week buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…
