WASHINGTON — Two Californians proposed for the federal bench and two Texans offered as U.S. marshals are collateral damage, at least for now, in the suddenly escalated Senate confirmation wars.
Expect more of the same.
Senate rules provide other ways beyond the now-curtailed filibuster to obstruct nominees. Hearings can be boycotted. Routine procedural approvals can be withheld. New Capitol Hill ambushes can be plotted, perhaps with tactics not yet seen. For a truly motivated minority, losing one weapon means it’s time to pick up another.
“My sense is the Republicans are going to be putting up whatever roadblocks they can, though they don’t have the main roadblock they used to have,” Russell Wheeler, a judiciary expert at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview Friday.
Republicans already flexed their muscles Thursday, the same day Senate Democrats weakened the filibuster by a 52-48 vote. Under the new rules, executive branch and most judicial nominations will require only 51 votes to proceed rather than the 60 required for legislation and Supreme Court nominations.
Using the prior filibuster rules, Republican lawmakers thwarted nominees, including Goodwin Liu, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor nominated to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. After falling short on a 52-43 Senate vote, Liu withdrew his nomination and now serves on the California Supreme Court. More recently, Republicans used the 60-vote margin to block three nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
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