On September 11, 2025, Senate Republicans voted to change chamber rules governing the nomination process for certain types of presidential nominees. The vote was 53-45, along party lines. This procedure, where a majority party changes a Senate rule or precedent through a simple majority vote, is often referred to as the nuclear option or constitutional option.

This change in Senate precedent now allows the chamber to vote by simple majority to confirm a slate of nominees in a group, rather than having to conduct individual confirmation votes for each nominee. The Senate can use this new precedent to confirm ambassador nominees and nominees to work in executive departments and agencies. Cabinet-level and judicial nominations are excluded and must be confirmed individually.

There are about 1,200 positions in the federal government that are affected by this rule change. Approximately 481 of these positions, or 40%, are currently filled, either by an officeholder held over from the previous administration or by someone confirmed during President Donald Trump’s (R) second term.

The Washington Post tracks a subset of these positions consisting of 822 offices. According to their tally, the Senate has confirmed 125 individuals so far during the second Trump administration. This is roughly equal to the number confirmed at this point during the Joe Biden (D) administration, and slightly higher than the number appointed at this point in Trump’s first term. At this point during George W. Bush’s (R) and Barack Obama’s (D) presidencies, the Senate had confirmed nearly 300 nominees.

Typically, after a president transmits a nomination to the Senate, a committee will then hold a hearing for that nominee. The committee then votes on whether to advance the nominee. If the nominee is advanced, then the full Senate debates the nomination, votes to invoke cloture on it, and then votes by simple majority to confirm the nominee. Under the new Senate precedent, senators will be able to group together nominees to move through the final votes in the confirmation process without needing the 60-vote majority previously required for bloc nominations.

There have been three other uses of the nuclear option in recent years, all of which affected how the confirmation process works in the Senate. In 2013, Senate Democrats used it to change the threshold to invoke cloture on non-Supreme Court nominations from 60 votes to 50 votes. 

The two other recent uses of the nuclear option occurred during Trump’s first administration. In 2017, Senate Republicans expanded Reid’s rule change from 2013 to include Supreme Court nominations. In 2019, Senate Republicans used to process to reduce the length of post-cloture debate on nominations from 30 hours to 2 hours.

Click here to read more about previous uses of the nuclear option in the U.S. Senate.