White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt read aloud a major update from the president at Thursday’s briefing: “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiation that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go in the next two weeks.”
What President Donald Trump means by “go” or “in the next two weeks” remains unclear. Does “go” mean giving Israel more warfighting capabilities, an American bunker-busting B-2 strike on Fordow, or an all out assault on the Ayatollahs? Does “in the next two weeks” mean tomorrow or when those two weeks expire on July 3? No one knows—and the president wants to keep it that way.
But the important point is there is a window for America and Iran to negotiate. Whether at the negotiating table or in the situation room, Trump will call the shots, but where things stand now, a workable deal will likely involve other regional players—the Gulf States, Israel, Turkey.
To complicate matters, however, Trump does not have many of his men manning American posts throughout the region. Steve Witkoff is Trump’s man wherever there is conflict. Mike Huckabee is Trump’s man in Jerusalem. But Trump does not have his men in Amman, Cairo, or Riyadh. In Bahrain, Oman, Lebanon, and the UAE, U.S. missions are led by career diplomats appointed during President Joe Biden’s tenure.
Though Trump has not yet submitted nominations for many of these Middle Eastern positions, this falls on the Senate’s shoulders, not the president’s. While the Senate worked in haste to confirm the top tier of Trump’s nominees, the upper chamber’s executive calendar currently has a backlog of over 100 of Trump nominees awaiting confirmation.
The 82 confirmations thus far roughly match the Senate’s progress on President Joe Biden’s nominees in 2021. Through May, the Senate was keeping pace with President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush’s confirmations, but have since fallen well behind.
The silver lining is that, five months into Trump’s second bite at the apple, the Senate is far outpacing the confirmations from Trump’s first term.
The first Trump administration, however, got a big boost through nominee confirmations in a few hours before August recess in 2017. The Senate confirmed so many Trump nominees in such a flurry that most senators lost count. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, then the number two Republican in the Senate, said on the floor at the time that the total was “roughly 65”—and dozens more could be confirmed before the Senate finished its business. Up until that point, the Senate had filled just 50 of the more than 1,100 positions that required Senate sign-off. This gave the first Trump administration key reinforcements at DOJ, DHS, Commerce, and the VA. Ambassadors were shipped off to NATO command in Brussels and the UK. Federal prosecutors took their posts.
Trump’s people came at a great cost. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer struck a deal, the Atlantic reported at the time: Democrats would give unanimous consent to Trump confirmations in exchange for Republicans ostensibly dropping Obamacare repeal. Days prior, on July 28, 2017, the GOP’s attempt at Obamacare repeal failed by a vote of 49-51—thanks to the late Arizona Sen. John McCain’s infamous thumbs down.
If such a deal falls Republicans’ way this summer, the GOP has much bigger problems. But if the Senate does not pick up the pace, Trump is looking at only 164 Senate confirmations through his first year in office. To put that in context: Bush 43 ended his first year in office with 403 confirmations; Obama, 383; Biden, 267; Trump I, 238.
In the post-filibuster era of Senate confirmations, there’s little excuse for Republicans’ failure to staff the Trump administration. No Democrat procedural delays can prevent the GOP from confirming Trump’s people. It is purely a question of political will. This does not fall entirely on Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s shoulders, either. The American people have long realized that a lot of their officials like being their representatives but don’t want to work like one. It is incumbent on Senate leadership, however, to force the Senate to do just that.
In a recent piece for the Federalist, Rachel Bovard, who sits on the board of The American Conservative, explains how this would work:
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The Senate could easily clear every nomination now on the Executive Calendar if they voted on nothing but nominations while working 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., for a full five-day workweek (right now, a normal workweek in the Senate runs from Monday at 5:30 p.m. to Thursday at noon).
If they were willing to work just one weekend a month, they could clear the entire backlog in one or two weekends. Things would move even faster if the GOP senators committed themselves to being on the Senate floor to force Democrats to either use or forfeit their debate time.
Certainly, the Senate has a lot of work on its plate—the Big Beautiful Bill and appropriations, for example. But the Senate’s workload is not going anywhere anytime soon: Republicans will want to get their major legislative items across the finish line and clear the calendar of any controversial votes before we enter an election year. Then, of course, there are judicial nominations. As those vacancies open, the Senate will, wisely, prioritize through the midterms those nominees who serve so long as they are on good behavior. Trump’s needs his executive-branch nominees to take on the deep state, but they will wither on the vine.
Everyone in Washington knows personnel is policy. It’s time to start acting like it.
