“Senate Democrats are obstructing every step of the confirmation process for President Trump’s team,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) tweets. “We have confirmed 13 of Trump’s nominees, most of whom were impacted by Democrats delaying votes.”
Senate Democrats are obstructing every step of the confirmation process for President Trump’s team. We have confirmed 13 of Trump’s nominees, most of whom were impacted by Democrats delaying votes. By this time in the Obama admin, TWICE as many of his noms were confirmed.
It’s a…
— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) February 9, 2025
The truncated paragraph of Sen. Scott’s tweet reads: “It’s a total double standard from Democrats, but we won’t give up. We will confirm Trump’s entire team.”
Scott notes that twice as many nominees of former President Barack Obama were confirmed at the same period of time during the 44th president’s administration.
Let us set the table for this topic with three pertinent truths. First, nominations and appointments by a president are subject to the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. Second, President Donald Trump received a big mandate in the 2024 presidential election. Third, minority powers are important, should be protected, and should not be abused.
The president nominates and appoints individuals to fill certain vacancies, and the Senate advises and consents regarding those. The process provides a legislative check on executive decisions.
President Trump is the chief executive, and he holds the right to choose people to fill vacancies. He got a mandate in the 2024 election that should afford him the political capital to get the nominees, his team, confirmed.
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The third point is extremely important. There are certain abilities that are possessed by the minority party in the Senate. “Delaying votes,” as Sen. Rick Scott tweets about what Democrats are doing, is perhaps one method of minority power. What all those powers are exactly gets into the inside baseball, if you will, of the Senate; but they exist for good reason. One of the good reasons is so that that a party in the majority cannot rule with an iron fist, which makes representational and mathematical sense considering that little more or less than half of the Senate is made up of one or the other party. While there are good reasons for minority powers, they should not be abused. Using parliamentary or legislative loopholes to obstruct everything or nearly everything the majority tries to do is over the top and risks trivializing the powers of a legislative minority. It also risks doing damage to the Senate because advice and consent should be a judicious and reasonably undertaken process, not a weapon of obstruction to constantly stall the presidency. There may very well come a time when a nominee needs to be stopped by the Senate, and hopefully the advice and consent process will at that time not be rendered impotent by overzealous obstructionism and will be the useful mechanism to do what is necessary.
Whether Democrats, or Republicans, for that matter, like the nominees selected by Trump is not at issue. The president received a big mandate in the election. Unless there is a serious reason to not consent to a nominee, the advice and consent process should afford the 47th president the same luxury it has afforded to the other 46 presidencies. And at the same time, the minority party should not allow their powers, which should be safeguards against tyrannical one-party rule, to turn into weapons of obstructionism, something that could hurt our system of government long after the 119th Congress.
