Dems Used Procedure To Slow-Walk EVERY Trump Appointment… Thune Announces New Rules

Advise and consent was supposed to be a ‘check and balance’ to minimize the role of corruption and nepotism in the appointments process. it was NOT meant to prevent a duly-elected president from enacting the mandate granted by the people.

Thune is announcing a rule change that became a necessary response to the latest round of Dem dirty tricks that have been in play since Trump returned to office.

Their dirty tricks are hardly new. But the obstructionism we’ve seen under Schumer was a new version of an old problem.

Anything that comes between Dems and the bare-knuckle application of political power will be attacked. They loved the Supreme Court until it could no longer serve as an end-run against unpopular legislation. They loved the popular vote and equated it with the ‘voice of the people’ until Trump won it in 2024. They lobbied for eighty-sixing the Electoral College, until they found it useful for dragging their Weekend-At-Bernies candidate over the finish line in 2020. On and on it goes.

Harry Reid even exploited his free speech immunity by falsely accusing Romney of tax fraud. His now-infamous reply? ‘Romney didn’t win, did he?’ In other words, integrity and character are less important than who holds power at the end of the day. A slough of inquiries into Biden-era weaponization against political enemies is showing just how widespread that mentality is among Democrats.

Since his second inauguration, Trump Resistance 2.0 has been more of the same. This time, there is no help from a Rogue FBI to come to Democrats’ rescue. Dems have no VOTES to block his agenda, but they have a lot of help in coming up with creative ways to use the ‘death by 1000 cuts’ approach.

Even with a 50-50 Senate, Dems crammed all kinds of unfit partisan appointments into office while practically daring Republicans to oppose them, relying on long-standing precedents of voice-vote and batch approvals. Then along came the 119th Congress, where Schumer’s senators decided to turn their backs on ALL precedent and decorum of letting lesser nominees proceed uncontested. Instead, they proceeded to slow-walk EVERY nominee, forcing Senators to burn valuable time that could have been better spent legislating to argue for the approval of some random deputy for the under-secretary of paperclip distribution.

End result? Appointees who would implement the mandate do not go to work in government, and the process itself eats up time that would be better spent in moving ahead with legislation or useful hearings. And that is exactly the point of using that tactic.

Thune was under a lot of pressure to put an end to this. But having learned from the Harry Reid mistake of the ‘nuclear option’ of ending the judicial filibuster, only to have 3 Trump appointees take their seats in SCOTUS as a result, it was important to do this in a way that didn’t create a precedent that Dems could shove back down our throats.

Yesterday, he announced how the GOP is planning to thread the needle of breaking the logjam without giving Dems a new power making government LESS accountable to opposition and the people in the future.

We have to fix what Democrats have broken.

The alternative is that they keep blocking and delaying the president’s team from getting in place, leaving the administration short-staffed by hundreds of positions at the end of President Trump’s term. I’m taking steps to end it. pic.twitter.com/QFFepNzNor

— Leader John Thune (@LeaderJohnThune) September 9, 2025

Markwayne Mullin gives the context and explains what the strategy does — and importantly — does NOT include.

Clear the backlog.
Confirm the nominees.

Rule changes are in motion. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/1wPVG1pqRk

— Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) September 9, 2025

It’s not a ‘new’ precedent. It’s affirming the old one.

Will that stop Dems from finding some way to play dirty with this change in the future? Probably not. But calling them on their BS when they do will be a lot easier, because this rule change has been anchored in past precedent. Any new games they play would be breaking with past precedent.