Senate deal on nominees elusive amid Democratic anger at Trump
President Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) are making slow progress toward a deal to clear some of the Senate’s backlog of executive branch nominees to allow weary senators to leave Washington for the four-week August recess.
Walking off the darkened Senate floor at 10 pm Friday, Thune said negotiators “floated” proposals “back and forth all day” but added that the Democratic demands “are probably not going to be something at this point we can meet.”
“No deal yet,” he said.
The Senate is scheduled to reconvene at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday and will vote at 10 a.m. to limit debate on Andrew Puzder’s nomination to serve as U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
Democrats are under heavy pressure to oppose Trump in any way they can, including stymying his nominees, and their anger soared again on Friday after the president fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after the agency released a weaker-than-expected jobs report.
Trump accused McEntarfer, a Biden appointee, of manipulating the jobs data for “political purposes” but Schumer said the president was only “shooting the messenger.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), the Democrats chief deputy whip, said called the firing “absolutely insane” while Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) called it “Soviet sh–.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said he’s willing to stick around steamy Washington for however many days it takes to grind through votes on Trump’s nominees, showing little appetite for a deal to advance a bloc of Trump picks through unanimous consent or a voice vote.
“I know there’s a lot of things being negotiated so I’m not going to comment on that,” he said when asked if he could support advancing a package of Trump nominees.
“I’m okay with sticking around to do work. It’s unfortunate that we have a Republican Party right now that’s off the rails and doing Donald Trump’s bidding,” he said.
Booker said Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because of a disappointing jobs report was “very authoritarian, very 1984.”
Senators are now expected to spend their weekend voting on Trump’s nominees as Democrats have refused to allow any of them — even those tapped to fill subordinate positions at federal departments and agencies — to be confirmed by unanimous consent or voice votes.
Senators on both sides of the aisle are eager to get home for the month-long break, having spent more time in Washington than usual since the start of the year.
As of this week, members of the Senate have cast more votes during the first seven months of the year than the chamber had previously taken over 12 months in 32 of the past 36 years.
But they will have to wait to return to their home states as leaders continue to wrestle over a deal on a nominations package and as Democrats are hearing demands from their party’s base to drag out the confirmations of Trump’s nominees for as long as possible.
Democratic senators said they had little sense of whether Schumer was making any progress with Trump on a deal.
“Could be more votes tonight or could be more votes tomorrow but I don’t really know,” Sen. Tim Kaine (R-Va.) said shortly after 8 pm.
Some senators were told to “keep their phones on” Friday night in case they were summoned back to for a late-night flurry of votes.
Republicans ranged from pessimistic to optimistic when asked about the prosect of a deal on a package of nominees to spare them from having to return to the Capitol for a Saturday session.
“At this point, I think they’re quite a ways apart,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told The Hill upon emerging from a conference luncheon earlier in the day.
“We’ll do our best to try to work through as many [nominations] as we can and kind of move from there,” Rounds said. “We don’t have a deal. We’re going to continue to try to work on something, but we don’t have a deal yet.”
Sen. Tom Tillis (R-N.C.) told The Hill after 8 p.m. Friday that it appeared the White House and Schumer’s team had made progress since lunchtime.
The talks reached new stage on Friday as Schumer began negotiating directly with the White House on the contours of a package.
Thune told reporters that he has put White House officials “into conversation directly” with Schumer’s team.
“That is how this is ultimately going to get resolved,” he said.
The Republican leader said that “a number of people” from the White House are talking with Schumer, who is under heavy pressure from his Democratic base to use every tool at his disposal to thwart Trump’s agenda.
Thune said a deal would be “up to the discussions between the White House and Schumer and the Democrats.”
He and other Republicans assert that Trump is being treated unfairly on the nominations front, noting that none of his choices have been confirmed via unanimous consent or a voice vote — breaking with past precedent.
The Democratic tactics have forced Republicans to churn through time-consuming procedural votes and final confirmation votes on every single Trump nominee
Democrats only allowed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to come directly to the floor for a final vote on the same day Trump took the oath of office. Rubio was confirmed by a vote of 99 to 0.
“This isn’t normal. This is petty partisan politics at its worst,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on the floor earlier on Friday. “Republicans are not backing down. We will continue to confirm President Trump’s nominees. The easy way if we can. The hard way if we must.”
Senate Republicans weekly policy luncheon on Tuesday was filled with discussions about changing the Senate’s rules for confirming lower-level nominees — either by eliminating the need for procedural votes before the final confirmation votes, collapsing the mandatory debate time, or allowing nominees to move in groups.
They would need to establish new rules by a simple-majority vote, a move that’s considered so destructive to bipartisanship that it’s referred to the “nuclear option.”
Under regular order, it would take 67 votes to change the Senate’s rules.
Senate Republicans are also talking about putting the Senate into an extended recess so that Trump could fill scores of open positions through recess appointments.
But that would require mustering 50 Senate Republican votes, something that’s not assured given that several Republican senators, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tillis are reluctant to give up their constitutional role of providing “advice and consent” on nominees.
Entering into a multi-week recess would require passing an adjournment resolution through both the Senate and House, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) hasn’t given any indication he plans to call House members back to Washington before September.
Trump has called on the Senate to stay in session throughout August in order to approve his nominees, but the vast majority of senators are ready for a break.
The Senate has been in session for 12 of the past 14 weeks and had its July Fourth recess chopped in half because of marathon negotiations over Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, which passed after senators slogged through a long series of amendment votes that went overnight and into the next day.
While Senate leaders remain deadlocked over a nominations deal, they achieved a major bipartisan accomplishment Friday evening when they passed a package of appropriations bills to fund military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture, and the legislative branch.
The Senate voted 87 to 9 to pass the military construction, veterans affairs and agriculture appropriations “mini-bus” and 81 to 15 to attach the legislative branch appropriations bill to the package.