Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma on Tuesday told Salem radio talk show host Scott Jennings that Republicans had not ruled out cancelling the August recess to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominees to various positions to address obstruction from Senate Democrats.
Senate Republicans have accused Democrats of engaging in a “historic level of obstruction” regarding Trump’s nominees, noting that not one Trump nominee has been confirmed via voice vote or unanimous consent in his second term, The Hill reported. Mullin provided Jennings with some statistics on just how many nominees have faced the filibuster after Jennings asked if the recess could be cancelled or shortened.
“I just came out of a meeting with [Republican] Senator [John] Thune [of South Dakota, the Senate majority leader], and that’s actually not off the table at all,” Mullin told Jennings. “We’re still trying to get these noms done. The problem’s, can we get, can we reach a quorum call? So we gotta get fifty plus one, meaning that every Republican, essentially has to be here for you to have it happen, and that’s still a question is: Can we meet that quorum call every day? So let me just give some facts about what’s happened so far. So this time versus Trump 45, so in 2017 versus 2025, 2017, we only had 55 confirmations done for President Trump.”
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“Today we have 110 as of as I’m talking to you right now, when I get off the phone, we will have 111, cause I gotta run up and vote, but… we have 110 right now, which is great,” Mullin continued. “The thing that is, that is something that’s never happened to any president of the United States, is President Trump is the only president in history not to have one single nominees go by unanimous consent or by voice vote. The Democrats have filibustered every single nominee except the very first one, which is Marco Rubio.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer came under fire from left-wing media figures and Democrats in Congress over his decision to help pass a GOP-backed spending bill to prevent a government shutdown in March. Mullin noted that Republicans have had to gain cloture on over 100 nominees.
“Thune made this point when he first became leader of the Republican senators, he said the Democrats can either do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way and since they chose to do it the hard way, we’ve now taken more votes than any Senate in 35 years, and we been in here longer than any Senate meeting consecutive days that any Senate in 15 years,” Mullin explained.
Mullin noted that often, non-controversial nominees have been confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent, something that he said occurred prior to Schumer becoming leader of Senate Democrats. Mullin outlined three possible courses of action to break the logjam.
“There’s really three options,” Mullin told Jennings. “One is they give us a package and we agree with the package of nonpartisan or bipartisan nominees that have been voted out of the committee to the floor, and we get all those done before we recess. Two, we stay in recess, we stay and don’t recess and get it done, or three, we go into a forced recess, which the president of the United States has the ability to call on Congress to recess.”
Mullin explained how a forced recess would occur, admitting that the process could sound “wonky.”
“We just clean the slate and do every one of his noms,” Mullin explained. “The problem with that is, the nominees, except in a couple of cases, the nominees wouldn’t be able to receive pay, so they would be nominated and not receive pay, they’d only be nominated until the end of this Congress and they wouldn’t be able to get security clearances. So that’s not ideal, but that’s an option we have.”
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