Democrats have been using every procedure they can to slow down or stifle Trump nominees for the past two years.
But all that stops today.
Today Republicans will officially change the debate time on a both executive branch and lower-tier judicial nominees from 30 hours to just 2 hours, allowing them to get more nominees approved.
Chad Pergram explains how this will work (via his Twitter):
1) The Senate today will vote to speed up the confirmation of some of President Trump’s nominees. The important action will likely start around 2:30 pm et
2) The current Senate procedural is to allow up to 30 hours of debate on nominees..once the Senate has voted to halt a filibuster. Senate Republicans want to squeeze that time down to just two hours for lower-tier executive branch and judicial nominees.
3) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will raise a point of order that debate time after the Senate votes to end filibusters on lower-level nominees is only two hours.
4) That’s of course not the case. The presiding officer will say no. It’s 30 hours. So McConnell will then appeal the chair’s ruling, asserting that is two hours.
5) The Senate will then vote that the presiding officer is wrong. It should be two hours. So, Senate Republicans actually want the NOES to prevail..disagreeing with the ruling of the chair. That needs a simple majority. Republicans have the votes and thus will prevail.
6) After that, the Senate will have established a new precedent. It’s two hours, not 30 hours for lower-level nominees.
7) This is NOT a rules change. Changing the rules in the Senate requires 67 (!) votes to end a filibuster. This is a PRECEDENT change. The Senate does much of its business based on precedent. In fact, the book of precedents is far-more voluminous.
Note the last point Pergam makes. They are NOT ending the filibuster. They are just shortening the debate time by about 28 hours for each nominee via a simple majority.
After two years of Schumer slow-downs, this should make Trump very happy to see more of his nominees finally get to work or get on the bench.