For decades, the Senate relied on a foundation of trust and basic courtesy, particularly when it came to confirming non-controversial presidential nominees. Senators typically approved routine civilian appointments with broad bipartisan support, often by voice vote or unanimous consent. The unwritten rule was simple: Save the fights for something that actually mattered.
The Democrats have demolished that norm, like the filibuster, with their scorched-earth politics. In their reflexive opposition to President Donald Trump, they’ve turned even the most mundane confirmations into partisan showdowns. Now, instead of moving swiftly through routine nominations, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) must burn precious floor time on what used to be uncontested business.
Just look at the numbers. Under Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, the Senate confirmed between 90% and 98% of civilian nominees without objection, routine, uncontroversial, and largely bipartisan. But when Trump took office in 2017, that tradition went out the window. Only 65% of his civilian nominees received the same basic courtesy. That break with precedent set the tone, and Republicans took notice. Joe Biden saw 57% of his civilian nominees confirmed by voice vote.
Today, under Trump’s second term, that number has dropped to a jaw-dropping 0%.
Zero.
That’s not a typo.
— Senate Republicans (@SenateGOP) July 29, 2025
The Senate has not confirmed a single Trump civilian nominee in his second term by unanimous consent or voice vote, which shows just how far Democrats are willing to go in their campaign of obstruction.
This is the same party that never stops preaching to the rest of us about “democracy” and the importance of institutional “norms.” Yet time and again, Democrats have proven that they have no real interest in preserving either. It’s not about principle. It’s about power.
Recommended: This Is Why Americans Support Trump's Immigration Policies
This isn’t about the nominees themselves. Democrats are feeling pressure from their base to ramp up opposition to Trump, so they have taken obstruction to the next level. So far, they’ve forced more than 100 procedural votes on nominees who, under normal circumstances, would have been swiftly confirmed by unanimous consent.
“The Democrats’ obstruction, which Republicans say has reached a ‘historic’ level, is setting the stage for a grand showdown later this week, as Thune is threatening to cancel part of the August recess to keep senators in steamy Washington to grind through stalled nominees,” reports The Hill. “Republicans say the Democrats’ tactics are a significant departure from how Republicans treated President Biden’s nominees during the four years Democrats controlled the White House and Senate, when approximately 60 percent of Biden’s nominees were approved by unanimous consent.”
Democrats have long been masters of obstruction and are rarely concerned with the long-term consequences of their actions. Under President George W. Bush, they used the judicial filibuster to block his nominees. But when the tables turned and Republicans returned the favor under Obama, Democrats suddenly declared the filibuster a racist relic. In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid led the charge to nuke the filibuster for lower-court judicial nominations, effectively silencing the Republican minority and rewriting the rules they themselves had exploited just years earlier.
At the time, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a blunt warning: “You will rue the day,” he said. “You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think.”
He was right, of course. By 2017, Trump was in the White House, and Republicans controlled the Senate. And thanks to the Democrats’ decision to nuke the filibuster four years earlier, they were powerless to stop Trump and McConnell from reshaping the federal judiciary with a historic wave of confirmations.
The destruction of unanimous consent is just the latest example of the Democrats’ partisan demolition derby. The era of unanimous consent is dead, and Democrats are the ones who killed it.
