The move to ease the confirmation of President Trump’s nominees came after Senate debate exposed raw emotions delivered in highly personal terms.
By Paul Kane Paul Kane Senior congressional correspondent and columnist Email Bio Follow April 3 at 4:10 PM Senate Republicans unilaterally changed the rules Wednesday governing presidential nominations, a bitter escalation of the long-running dispute over the rights of the minority in a chamber once hailed for its bipartisan nature.
Moments earlier, Schumer accused the GOP leader of wanting to turn the Senate into a “conveyor belt” to approve Trump’s nominees and admonished Republicans for allowing McConnell’s “debasement of the Senate.” The final steps played out in a heated debate before the first set of several procedural votes set to occur into Wednesday evening. The parliamentary move was once deemed so controversial that senators call it the “nuclear option,” a violation of long-standing requirements that rules changes had to be approved by a two-thirds majority.
McConnell has said shifting the federal judiciary to the right is his single biggest priority as Senate leader, a process that he began with great controversy by refusing to consider any nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court after his February 2016 death.
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