With just a simple majority needed to confirm Donald Trump’s cabinet, Senate Democrats know they can’t single-handedly stop his nominees or prevent the GOP agenda. But they can stall.
During Trump’s first week in office, the Senate confirmed just two nominees, which is well short of what Republicans were hoping to have accomplished by now. The situation was so dire on Thursday that Majority Leader John Thune announced the Senate would remain in session over the weekend to vote on Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be defense secretary and Kristi Noem’s bid to lead Homeland Security.
Senate Democrats insist the delays are rooted in civic duty and constitutional adherence to the Senate’s role of “advice and consent” — favorite words of any senator kicking a nominee’s tires. But GOP senators are confident the obstructions are about something else: delaying the mandate.
To hear Republicans tell it, Democrats are turning to one of their last lines of defense — the Senate rules — to prevent Trump from having his team for as long as possible and slow down the new president’s ability to turn his focus to his broader legislative agenda in a reconciliation package.
“That’s all they’re doing,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville told NOTUS. “That’s all they can do now, slow us down.”
Some of the nominees Democrats have impeded will likely be confirmed with bipartisan support. Elise Stefanik (to be U.N. secretary) and Sean Duffy (to be transportation secretary) are both headed toward overwhelming votes. But other nominees — like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Health and Human Services), Kash Patel (FBI) and Russell Vought (Office of Management and Budget) — look like they’ll be close, partisan battles.
Democrats are so worried about those Trump nominees leading agencies that they’re doing everything in their power to shut them out for as long as they can.
At the moment, that means Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is not reaching a time agreement with Thune. The Senate is currently teed up for a rare Sunday vote at 4 a.m. to confirm Noem, though that may change quickly. (Senators despise weekend work and have traditionally agreed to move up votes that would otherwise happen without a deal.)
But both Democrats and Republicans may enjoy the optics of voting on the weekend — Democrats to prove that they’re doing everything they can to hamper Trump’s agenda, and Republicans to prove that they’re doing everything they can to help.
“We’ll stay here raising our objections to people who are unqualified, no matter how long it takes,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren told NOTUS. “These are not delays; this is doing our constitutional duty of ‘advice and consent’ to the president.”
On Tuesday, Democrats used objections and procedural moves to delay a confirmation vote on CIA nominee John Ratcliffe until Thursday, subsequently pushing back the votes on Hegseth and Noem.
The objection prompted Thune to accuse Democrats of playing politics.
“I honestly don’t know what that accomplishes for them,” he said.
But the answer is obvious. If you can delay Ratcliffe — who advanced from committee on a 14-3 vote and was confirmed by the full Senate 74-25 — you’ll delay the more objectionable nominees, like Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard.
Kennedy and Gabbard are set for committee hearings next week, on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, and their meetings with Democratic lawmakers have elicited some rather unflattering reviews. Democrats are hoping that the longer their nominations hang out in the open, the more likely it is that Republicans turn on them too.
Or, at least, the public opposition will harden and Republicans will pay a political price.
Then there’s Patel and Vought. The pair of Trump loyalists are particularly alarming to Democrats. Patel, who previously claimed the FBI was planning Jan. 6 for a year and has said he’d shut down the FBI’s Hoover Building on Day One, is particularly unpopular. And Vought is a policy nightmare for Democrats. He was the director of OMB for the latter part of Trump’s first administration, and he’s promised to enact steep cuts to the federal government.
So, while Democrats swear delays aren’t political, they say the names the Senate is considering offer plenty of reason to pause.
“The reason it’s taking so long now is because Trump nominated so many people with poor values, and they’re unqualified for the positions they were nominated for,” Sen. Ed Markey said. “So the Senate is doing its job.”
But on top of the Democratic delay, a problem for GOP leaders is that they can’t guarantee support from their own members on some of the nominees.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, two key swing votes, refused for weeks to say how they would vote on Hegseth. Murkowski released a statement on Thursday saying she would vote against him. Collins released a similar statement after opposing him during a procedural vote.
“I’m absolutely at peace with my decision,” Murkowski said after the vote on Thursday.
And now, Sen. Mitch McConnell is an open question.
Trump told reporters Friday morning that he was “very surprised that Collins and Murkowski would do that,” meaning vote against Hegseth, and he raised questions about McConnell, who previously voted to advance Hegseth’s nomination.
“Is Mitch a ‘no’ vote? How ’bout Mitch?” Trump asked reporters.
Instead of working with Thune on a time agreement, Democrats elected to “run out the clock” on Hegseth. But that strategy seems to have paid off — at least to some extent.
While Hegseth was waiting for a vote, new reporting emerged on an affidavit from Hegseth’s ex-sister-in-law containing new allegations about Hegseth’s past behavior. Hegseth’s then-wife denied the claims in the affidavit. But Democratic members of the Armed Services Committee, most of whom did not meet with Hegseth prior to his hearing, requested meetings with the nominee to discuss the allegations.
“When you’re talking about something like the Department of Defense for the world’s most powerful military, I think it won’t hurt us to take a beat and take a look at what we’re doing here,” Sen. Raphael Warnock told NOTUS.
Meanwhile, Republicans contend that Democrats are harming national security by holding up Hegseth’s nomination.
“Unfortunately, Democrats are doing this the hard way,” Sen. Ron Johnson said. “Really concerned about national security, aren’t they?”
After Tuesday’s setback, Republican senators prepared for an extended stay on Capitol Hill. (For Tuberville, that meant preparing to miss Saturday’s basketball game between No. 1 Auburn and No. 6 Tennessee.)
“We’re not gonna blink,” Sen. John Kennedy said on Wednesday. “We’ve asked our Democratic friends to cooperate. They’ve chosen not to. So we’re just gonna grind it out.”
“That’s why God made weekends,” Kennedy added. “Sometimes you’ve got to work ’em.”
As Tuberville said, “We’re ready to work and work every day for the next 100 days.”
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Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.