Thune Initiates Plan To Slow Down Schumer’s Push To Confirm Judges In Final Days

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD), who was recently elected to be the Senate Majority Leader when the new Congress takes over in January, has initiated a plan to slow down how many judges Senate Democrats will be able to confirm in their finals days in the majority.

The plan involves invoking “procedural maneuvers” on the Senate floor that will “significantly delay votes” on the judges during the final days of the 118th Congress, Fox News reported.

The move will limit the number of judges that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is able to ram through before the new Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2025.

“If Sen. Schumer thought Senate Republicans would just roll over and allow him to quickly confirm multiple Biden-appointed judges to lifetime jobs in the final weeks of the Democrat majority, he thought wrong,” Thune said in a statement.

Schumer said on the Senate floor on Monday that Democrats would prioritize ramming through as many judges as possible during their final days in the majority.

In floor remarks on Monday, Schumer emphasized that Democrats are prioritizing judges in the lame duck session.

“After we vote today, we’ll keep going. Tonight, I will file on additional judges who we will move forward on the floor this week,” he said. “So, let me repeat: the Senate is going to keep prioritizing judicial and administrative confirmations this week, this month, and for the rest of this year.”

Thune was elected Senate Majority Leader last week, defeating Texas Senator John Cornyn by a vote of 29 to 24. Florida Senator Rick Scott was eliminated on the first ballot after finishing a distant third.

After being elected to the leadership role, Thune said that he would give fair confirmation hearings to all of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.

“The American people want change in this country,” he said. “They’re tired of the Biden-Harris-Schumer agenda, and they want President Trump to fix some things. And he wants to get a team in place that can do that, and we’re going to work with him to see that he gets his team installed as quickly as possible so he can implement his agenda.”

Thune said that all the nominees have a process they must go through and that Senate Republicans would not allow Democrats to “obstruct or block President Trump and the will of the American people.”

He also noted that using recess appointments is a possibility but that to get to that point, Republicans would effectively have to all vote to go to recess, meaning that if some Republicans had a problem with a specific nominee, they could vote against going into recess at which point recess appointments would be off the table.

Thune said that Senate Republicans would take advantage of how Democrats weaponized the use of the budget reconciliation process during the Biden administration to ram through unpopular legislation with a simple 51-vote majority.

He said the Senate was focused on fixing the border, strengthening the economy, boosting the military, cutting regulations and taxes, and dominating energy.