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Mitch (via his Twitter feed).."Today, I made clear that if Democrats ever attack the key Senate rules, it would drain the consent and comity out of the institution. A scorched-earth Senate would hardly be able to function. It wouldn’t be a progressive’s dream. It would be a nightmare. I guarantee it."

The first day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump was largely taken up with procedural issues. Senators argued over and then adopted an organizing resolution laying out the rules under which the trial will proceed. In his opening statement, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., charged that the resolution proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was “partisan,” a “national disgrace,” and a “dark day in Senate history.” All of this heated rhetoric was based on Schumer’s misleading claim that McConnell’s resolution was unfair and significantly different from the resolution governing Bill Clinton’s trial. Yet the resolution adopted...

House Democrats prosecuting the Trump impeachment case took aim Tuesday at White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, claiming in a stunning letter that the lead member of the president's defense team is actually a “material witness” to the charges in both articles and demanding that he disclose all “first-hand facts and information” before proceedings begin. The impeachment "managers" said they need that information in order to weigh potential “ethical” issues or conflicts of interest concerning his defense of the president. Just hours before Senate trial proceedings were set to resume, the impeachment managers claimed that during the House inquiry they gathered...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that if the House impeaches President Trump he will “have no choice” but to hold a trial in the Senate and a vote on removing the president from office. His comments in an interview with CNBC confirm the position he took in an interview with NPR in March, and the conclusion of a Senate staff memo that was obtained by HuffPost. “Under the Senate rules we’re required to take it up if the House does go down that path, and we’ll follow the Senate rules,” McConnell said Monday. “It’s a Senate rule related...

Democrats blocked a GOP effort Tuesday to change Senate rules and speed up confirmation of most of President Trump’s nominees, leaving Republicans with few options other than a “nuclear” confrontation. The rules change has become a major test of political wills, with Republicans saying Democrats are treating Mr. Trump unfairly compared to past presidents. Democrats counter that Mr. Trump’s picks are so bad that they deserve the obstruction. Tuesday’s vote was 51-48, leaving the GOP well shy of the 60 needed to overcome Democrats’ filibuster. In the wake of the vote, Republicans seemed resigned to going “nuclear.” “This needs to...

Senate Republicans are poised to advance a resolution next week to drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to confirm hundreds of President Trump's nominees as Republicans mull going "nuclear" to muscle through the change. Under the resolution introduced by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the chairman of the Rules Committee, most nominees would only be subjected to up to two hours of debate after they clear an initial hurdle. Currently, nominees are subjected to up to 30 hours of additional debate after proving they have the simple majority needed to defeat a filibuster and be...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement in response to the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh as Associate Justice to the United States Supreme Court: In confirming Judge Kavanaugh the Senate has confirmed a good man with an impeccable record of honoring the U.S. Constitution. Judge Kavanaugh’s record shows him to be a believer in the rule of law, and I believe he will serve the American people with distinction. We are grateful that a majority of the Senate rejected the leftist smears, abuse of process, and rejection of constitutional norms. Now there must be...

Looking to speed the confirmation process for a backlog of President Trump’s appointments, Senate Republicans on Wednesday advanced a measure to cut down on floor debate time for certain executive branch and judicial nominees. Republicans said Democrats forced their hand on the issue by making the Senate devote too much floor time over the past year to clearing procedural hurdles on even non-controversial and lower-level nominees. “Pointless wasting time, even when we know what the outcome is going to be, is what we’re talking about here today,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The change, pushed by Sen. James Lankford,...

Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further. Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades. The immediate rationale for the move was to allow the confirmation of three picks by President Obama to the U.S....

President Trump is eager to put his conservative imprint on the federal judiciary, but an impediment remains. Though the Senate has virtually eliminated the ability of the minority party to block appointments to the bench from the Supreme Court on down, individual senators can still thwart nominees from their home states by refusing to sign off on a form popularly known for its color — the blue slip. Now, with some Democrats refusing to consent as the Trump administration moves to fill scores of judicial vacancies, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader, is for the first time...

The procedure for withholding consent is straightforward, but deploying it is tricky. For the Senate to move in a timely fashion on any order of business, it must obtain unanimous support from its members. But if a single senator objects to a consent agreement, McConnell, now majority leader, will be forced to resort to time-consuming procedural steps through the cloture process, which takes four days to confirm nominees and seven days to advance any piece of legislation — and that’s without amendment votes, each of which can be subjected to a several-day cloture process as well.

In the first week of April, 2017, a nostalgic nation watched as one of the grand old institutions crumbled into dust: the Senate filibuster was removed from the toolbox for presidential appointments. Many on both sides of the aisle shed a tear or two as the US Senate lost one of its most famous and romantic tools; until the Democrats overplayed their hand on the Gorsuch nomination, a single Senator could hold up a presidential appointee with a filibuster. No more. Before you shed any more tears, though, dear Gentle Reader, please consider who had long been empowered with this...

As Washington people go around doing Washington things and talking to other Washington people about Washington-focused health-care reform, we would do well to take a step back to simplify the debate in front of us. We are the most prosperous country in the history of the world. As such, we have many of the best hospitals, doctors, nurses, and medicines available. We have hundreds of insurers that take risk — for profit — to insure us. We have fairly broad, but expensive and not always effective, social safety nets in which we pool our resources through taxation in an effort...

Proponents of the nuclear option say it is necessary to prevent Democrats from using the filibuster to permanently prevent a vote to confirm Gorsuch. Opponents of the nuclear option say it will not only fundamentally alter the nature of the Senate, it will also greatly empower Democrats when they retake the Senate and the White House. At its core, the debate over the nuclear option highlights the tension between the need for debate and the need for finality on judicial matters. Unfortunately, exercising the nuclear option is a zero-sum game. If it’s invoked, debate is dead. If it isn’t, proponents...

Fortunately, invoking the nuclear option isn’t the only way a Senate majority can confirm a Supreme Court justice in the face of minority obstruction. In a recent Heritage Foundation paper, Ed Corrigan and I detail how Senate rules empower a majority to overcome a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee — without having to invoke cloture or using the nuclear option. Specifically, a majority may use Rule XIX (the two-speech rule) to shorten the amount of time members are able to filibuster. This rule prohibits any senator from giving more than two speeches on any one question during the same...

A senate rule change championed by outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid could leave Democrats powerless to stop any of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments. In 2013, Sen. Reid and other Democrats pushed forward with a rule change dubbed the “nuclear option” to eliminate filibusters for all presidential nominations except Supreme Court justices. This means that a simple majority of 51 votes instead of 60 votes is necessary to confirm executive office appointments. The Republicans are set to enter 2017 with at least 51 senators and can gain another seat with a likely win in the December senate run-off race...

Did the democrats do away with the 60 vote rule to end debate? Will this apply to The next supreme court nominee or will the dems be able to filibuster our nominee? Thanks for any clarification!

The vote to DEFUND Planned Parenthood FAILS in the Senate!

The Minnesota Senate will keep its rule forbidding members from looking at one another during floor debate and will continue to ban everyone from having drinks on the Senate floor.The issues arose Monday during the passage of the rules to govern the Senate. On a 15-44 vote, the Senate decided to keep its current requirement that all speakers must gaze at the Senate president.

If you're looking for a good laugh this week, you probably can't do better than Tuesday's White House press conference. Reporters asked spokesman Josh Earnest about the confirmation of two Obama-appointed ambassadors whose confirmation was only possible because Democrats manipulated Senate rules earlier this year to make it easier to approve executive-branch nominees. By the narrowest of margins, two people completely unqualified to represent U.S. interests abroad were confirmed to serve in relatively important countries they know nothing about. Colleen Bell, the new U.S. ambassador to Hungary, is a former soap opera producer who couldn't name a single strategic interest...