My last post explained several ways in which Senate Democrats have radically changed norms that had long guided the confirmation process. Here’s the story of another tactic that Democrats pioneered, another chapter in their because-we-can obstruction playbook.
Each two-year Congress is divided into two one-year sessions. Senate Rule 31 provides that pending nominations must be returned to the president for renomination at the end of the session in which they were made or when the Senate “adjourn[s] or take[s] a recess for more than thirty days.” Traditionally, with either Republicans or Democrats in the White House or controlling the Senate, this rule was waived to keep pending nominations in place.
During the first year of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, for example, the Senate returned a total of twelve nominations — judicial or political — at either the August or the inter-session recess. Then, President George W. Bush won the 2000 election by a hair and Democrats vowed to use “whatever means necessary” to fight his nominations.
That was not an empty threat. On August 3, 2001, as the Senate was preparing to recess for the month, Democrats objected to the traditional motion to waive Rule 31, sending 162 pending nominations, including 45 judicial picks, back to the president. That total was shocking enough, but it gets worse. Half of those nominations were no more than four days old; in fact, Democrats forced the return of 28 nominations that the Senate had received earlier that same day.
Everyone was swept up in the Democrats’ net, including dozens nominated to be federal prosecutors and judges on the federal or District of Columbia courts; picks to be ambassador to Gambia, the Bahamas, Guinea, and Andorra; and nominations to positions at AmeriCorps, Federal Agriculture Mortgage Corporation, Mississippi River Commission, Rural Utilities Service, Community Relations Service, Delta Regional Authority, the International Joint Commission between the U.S. and Canada, and the Office of Solid Waste at the Environmental Protection Agency. This disparate group had one thing in common: the president who nominated them. That was enough for Democrats to continue dismantling the confirmation process.
For a while it seemed like this might have been a one-off tantrum, perhaps just Democrats acting out after the Bush election. A few months later, for example, they returned just one nomination to Bush between sessions of the evenly divided 107th Congress. In President Barack Obama’s first two years, Republicans allowed all but nine nominations to remain in the Senate.
As in so many ways, however, President Donald Trump’s 2016 election just made Democrats crazy. They simply could not contain themselves. At the end of 2017, they sent 90 nominations, including 26 to judicial positions, back to the president who, as others have, promptly renominated them and sent them back to the Senate. Four years later, not to be outdone, Republicans returned the favor at the end of Biden’s first year, between the sessions of the 117th Congress. They sent 123 nominations, 102 political and 21 judicial, back to the president.
And so it goes. On January 3, 2026, as the first session of the current 119th Congress officially closed, Democrats were at it again, objecting to maintaining the procedural status quo for 91 nominations. Like other tactics Democrats have employed — unnecessary cloture votes, objecting to consideration of multiple nominations, etc. — this can delay, but cannot prevent, confirmation. Rather than a check on the president’s appointment power, Democrats are turning the Senate’s role into a weapon to wage an ongoing war against the president.
The process that the Framers designed worked well for both parties for two centuries before Democrats started scorching the confirmation earth. This is not how the Framers designed this part of our system of government. They believed that, since the appointment power belongs to the president, it should take “special and strong reasons” to reject a nomination; simply preferring someone else (or disliking the current president) is not enough. When Democrats said in 2001 that they would use “all means necessary,” they meant it.