Top Senate Republican ready to 'roll over' Democrats with rule change to confirm Trump nominees
Majority Whip John Barrasso says GOP will change Senate rules 'unilaterally' if Dems don't cooperate on 145 pending picks
By Alex Miller Fox News
Published August 30, 2025 5:00am EDT
FIRST ON FOX: Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso is ready to go nuclear on Senate Democrats and their blockade of President Donald Trump’s nominees.
Before leaving Washington, D.C., to their respective home states, Senate Republicans were on the verge of a deal with their colleagues across the aisle to hammer out a deal to ram through dozens of Trump’s picks for non-controversial positions.
But those talks fell apart when Trump nuked any further negotiations over funding demands from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Currently, there are 145 pending nominations on the Senate’s executive calendar, with that number expected to balloon when the upper chamber reopens for business.
Lawmakers are set to return on Tuesday, and Barrasso, R-Wyo., wants to immediately tackle the nomination quandary. He’s engaged in a public pressure campaign, writing an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal directly calling out Schumer.
Meanwhile, he’s facilitated talks among Senate Republicans on the best path forward, and told Fox News Digital in an interview that, at this point, he’s willing to do anything necessary to see the president’s picks confirmed.
"We need to either get a lot of cooperation from the Democrats, or we're going to have to roll over them with changes of the rules that we're going to be able to do in a unilateral way, as well as President Trump making recess appointments," he said.
Senate Democrats, under Schumer's direction, are unlikely to play ball, however.
Schumer, in response to Barrasso’s public jab against him and Senate Democrats, contended in a statement that "historically bad nominees deserve a historic level of scrutiny by Senate Democrats."
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-senate-republican-ready-roll-over-democrats-rule-change-confirm-trump-nominees
