President Donald Trump gave Senate Republicans permission to begin their August recess Saturday night, shortly before Democratic and Republican leaders agreed to quickly vote on seven final civilian nominees but none of the more than 100 still pending on the calendar.
The agreement allowed for votes to begin on cloture and confirmation of the nominees without debate. Among those confirmed under the deal was Jeanine Pirro, who was nominated by Trump to be U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
The directive from Trump took pressure off of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to clear the executive calendar and confirm all of Trump’s pending nominees before the recess.
Trump had repeatedly called on Senate Republicans to stay in session through August to vote on his nominees. “Republicans, for the health and safety of the USA, DO YOUR JOB, and confirm All Nominees. They should NOT BE FORCED TO WAIT,” Trump posted Thursday on Truth Social.
But after an exhausting stretch on Capitol Hill, including multiple “vote-a-ramas,” there was little appetite on either side to stick around.
Intense bipartisan discussions began while senators were dual-tracking the $188 billion fiscal 2026 appropriations package that passed late Friday, the other outstanding piece of business that had been standing in the way of recess.
Frozen funds
Talks began to center around an agreement sought by Democrats for the White House to release frozen funding that is being held up by the Office of Management and Budget, which Democrats have said is a deal-breaker for any further bipartisan movement on appropriations this fall.
But those talks fell apart Saturday night when Trump rejected Democrats’ offer to relent on his nominees in exchange for release of “north of $1 billion in exchange for confirming bipartisan nominees,” as a GOP aide described it.
The frozen funding in play was largely for the National Institutes of Health. At one point, Democrats had demanded no further presidential rescissions packages, like the one Trump signed last month canceling $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funds. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Friday announced it was shutting down as a result.
At about 6:30 p.m. on Saturday evening, Trump changed tack on his demands for the Senate to remain in session. The president posted on Truth Social that Republicans should instead “go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are.”
Trump wrote that Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s demand to unfreeze the $1 billion was “egregious and unprecedented, and would be embarrassing to the Republican Party if it were accepted. It is political extortion, by any other name.”
Schumer, D-N.Y., wouldn’t go into the details of offers and counteroffers between the two parties. But he said Democrats and Republicans were making progress until Trump decided to call off talks and let senators go home without votes on his more partisan and controversial nominees.
“My Republican colleagues know that when we are able to land bipartisan deals and get painfully close to a fair deal on partisan nominees, we can get something done. But of course they tried … Donald Trump pulled the rug out from under them,” Schumer said at a Saturday night news conference.
“No one knows what the hell he did and why he did it. They’re befuddled. …But they all know one thing: Donald Trump didn’t get his way,” Schumer added. “He bullied us, he cajoled us, he called us names. And he went home with nothing.”
‘Nuclear’ disarmament
By 8 p.m., votes had begun on seven nominees under the time agreement, but there was no deal to voice vote the roughly 140 remaining nominations on the calendar. Prior to calling for the vote, Thune confirmed that at the end of Saturday’s session, the Senate would recess until September.
He did not comment on there seemingly being no deal to confirm the remaining nominations Trump had submitted prior to the recess. But Republican threats to go “nuclear” on nominations — eliminating even the simple-majority cloture threshold currently in place — appeared to be disarmed by Trump’s post.
During Saturday’s session, cloture motions on 10 nominations for various civilian posts that Thune filed on Thursday ripened.
Votes on three of the of the nominees, Andrew Puzder to be U.S. representative to the European Union, Brian Burch to be ambassador to the Holy See, and Jason Reding Quinones to be U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida were spread out as the Senate used most of the full two hours allotted for debate once cloture has been invoked.
Between votes Saturday, Republicans complained of Democrats’ decision to not confirm any of Trump’s nominees by voice vote or unanimous consent. They pointed to the high percentage of civilian nominees confirmed without a roll call vote during previous administrations. That percentage has decreased significantly in recent years.
Democrats said their refusal was based on the quality of the nominees up for debate.
“Historically bad nominees deserve a historical level of scrutiny,” Schumer said on the floor.
Rather than focus on Trump’s individual nominations, Senate Democrats used much of their debate time to discuss the administration’s refusal to release files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. Republicans objected to three unanimous consent requests to immediately consider and pass a bill to require the release of the files.
Republicans also objected to a unanimous consent request to immediately consider and pass a separate Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., bill to release files related to Epstein that was identical to an amendment that was adopted by the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 10.
During debate Saturday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., threatened that Republicans could end the use of cloture on nominations entirely if Democrats refused to come to an agreement, pointing to the precedent set by then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in 2013.
Cotton also floated the possibility of the Senate and House adjourning to allow Trump to make recess appointments.
“The question is up to the Democrats,” Cotton said. “Do you want to do this the easy way or do you want to do it the hard way?”
But despite threats of going nuclear, Senate Republicans didn’t take any meaningful steps Saturday to speed up the process before a timing agreement was reached. Both Democratic and Republican senators repeatedly froze floor action by noting the absence of a quorum, and Republicans held each floor vote open for around 45 minutes, both of which are commonplace in the Senate.
After Thune announced that recess would, after all, begin shortly, the two parties agreed to skip debate time and just vote on some more nominations, ending with former Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., to be administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.
Among the final acts of business before recess: Thune filed cloture on the motion to proceed to the defense authorization bill, which will ripen for a vote at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 2.
David Lerman contributed to this report.
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