Trump, Senate GOP clobber Biden’s confirmation numbers as year comes to close

President Donald Trump is breezing past his predecessor on confirmations.

Senate Republicans are set to approve a bloc of 97 Trump nominees, positioning them far in advance of confirmed nominees at the same point during the Biden and first Trump administrations. The total number of confirmations in Trump’s second term will be at least 417 following the passage of the group nominations package later this week.

“We will, by the end of this year, have a record number of [Trump’s] nominees approved to the executive branch,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Fox News on Thursday.

Former President Joe Biden, conversely, had 365 nominees confirmed by the end of December 2021. Trump had secured 323 confirmations at the end of 2017 in his first term,

Among the list of nominees slated for confirmation are former Republican New York Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who is set to serve in a senior role at the Department of Labor, and two picks for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — James Murphy and Scott Mayer — in addition to 94 others across the federal government.

The expected NLRB confirmations come after Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, a Biden appointee, from the influential board in January, which the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals determined to be lawful.

Senate Republicans are also expected to confirm noted Elon Musk ally Jared Isaacman to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Douglas Weaver to serve on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission individually this week.

Thune moved to change Senate precedent in September to confirm an unlimited number of non-Cabinet, non-judicial nominees simultaneously, following months of unprecedented Democratic obstruction of Trump’s picks. Trump, in his current term, is the first president in about a hundred years to not have a single nominee for a civilian position confirmed by the Senate via unanimous consent or voice vote — due to Democrats’ delay tactics.

Following Republicans invoking the “nuclear option” to speed up the confirmation process, Senate Republicans confirmed a 48-member nominations package in September and approved 108 of the president’s picks in a single group vote in October.

Senate Republicans have also confirmed 26 federal judges to serve on district and circuit courts this year.

More than 30 of Trump’s U.S. attorneys will also have won confirmation before the Christmas recess.

Trump has repeatedly urged Senate Republicans to end the blue slip courtesy, an over-century-old practice that effectively gives any senator veto power over U.S. attorney nominees in their home states. Democrats have not returned blue slips for prosecutor positions in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.

Defenders of the tradition, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, have argued that blue slips will protect Republicans when there is a Democratic president in the White House.

Grassley has also said he is focused on ensuring Trump’s judicial picks have the votes to advance out of his committee, where Republicans hold a 12-10 majority.

Some Republicans on the judiciary panel have said they would oppose U.S. attorney picks who lack support from a home-state senator, even if Grassley scrapped the tradition.

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