Senate Republicans Give Trump Big Win
On Tuesday evening, Senate Republicans voted to confirm more than 100 nominations of President Donald Trump, thereby eliminating the backlog of outstanding appointments in one action.
The confirmations followed the Senate GOP’s alteration of its rules last month, permitting the collective approval of most executive branch nominees instead of individual assessments. The modification does not pertain to Cabinet secretaries or judicial nominations, as reported by Politico.
This action signifies the most substantial aggregation of confirmations since the implementation of the rule modification. Approved individuals include former Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, appointed as ambassador to the Bahamas, and Sergio Gor, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, designated as ambassador to India.
Republicans implemented the “nuclear option,” a partisan rules modification, to expedite the confirmation process following protracted Democratic resistance that had significantly hindered it.
A number of Republicans briefly contemplated permitting President Trump to execute recess appointments, so allowing him to occupy offices during Senate adjournment. Nevertheless, GOP leaders finally dismissed that proposal, citing apprehensions that it could have adverse repercussions when their party is in the minority next.
The confirmation of the mass signifies a significant triumph for Trump as his administration persists in appointing essential positions throughout the federal government under persistent congressional stalemate.
In September, Senate Republicans considered modifications to the chamber’s confirmation process in response to a backlog of judicial nominations caused by obstructionist tactics employed by minority Democrats.
President Donald Trump blasted Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for maintaining the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition, which let home-state senators to influence nominees and could essentially obstruct their confirmation if the slips were not submitted.
Republican senators deliberated multiple options prior to a Wednesday meeting aimed at expediting confirmations. The Hill reports that the primary option resembled a Democratic proposal introduced two years prior, which would have allowed a single vote on up to 10 nominees. Additional proposals encompassed significantly decreasing discussion duration, rendering certain nominations nondebatable, and eliminating requisite procedural votes.
Due to the requirement of only a simple majority for rule changes, Republicans could have proceeded without Democratic backing. However, such an action—characterized as a “nuclear option”—would have highlighted the partisan aspect of the conflict. A GOP working committee was assigned to finalize the details, as stated in the article.
“All parties had been discussing various alternatives,” stated Alabama GOP Senator Katie Britt, the group’s chairman. “One outcome of that process was the empowerment of the committee.”
Britt indicated that she had been working with Democrats to create an appropriate rules modification. The panel convened over part of the August recess to identify a course of action for the outstanding nominees.
In early September, before to the planned summer breaks, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) declared that he would maintain the chamber’s session over the weekend to expedite the approval of many of Trump’s pending candidates, as Senate Democrats persisted in obstructing the confirmation process.
The Senate was set to commence its customary August recess on the 4th; however, this schedule was disrupted as Democrats insisted on roll call votes for even the most standard nominations. Trump pushed senators to postpone their recess, cautioning that his nominees should not be “compelled to wait” any longer, as reported by Just The News.
The Senate confirmed a prominent nominee – Jeanine Pirro, selected by Trump to be Washington D.C.’s chief prosecutor. The former New York judge, prosecutor, and Fox News host was among over 150 pending confirmations.
Pirro’s endorsement was issued mere hours prior to the Senate’s recess, as discussions to forward a more extensive list of nominees disintegrated.
Legislators approved merely seven of Trump’s nominees prior to departing for the remainder of August. A proposed agreement facilitating numerous further confirmations disintegrated following the breakdown of discussions with Senate Republicans, the White Houseand Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Gorsuch Warns Lower Courts After Repeatedly Ignoring Supreme Court Rulings
A Supreme Court justice appointed by President Donald Trump is fed up. Justice Neil Gorsuch on Thursday blasted lower courts for repeatedly defying rulings from the highest court in the land, as the justices handed the Trump administration a narrow victory in a case over federal research grants.
In a 5-4 decision, the Court allowed the administration to cut millions of dollars in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants that supported projects tied to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, gender identity research, and COVID-19. The NIH, the world’s largest source of public biomedical research funding, will no longer award grants based on race or DEI objectives under the ruling, The Daily Caller reported.
“This marks the third time in a matter of weeks this Court has had to reverse a lower court on an issue it had already addressed,” Gorsuch wrote, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.”
The case arose after a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered the government to continue payments despite a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year permitting Trump to cut similar DEI-related grants. A coalition of 16 Democratic attorneys general and public health groups sued, alleging discrimination.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett provided the deciding vote. She joined conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh in terminating the NIH grants, but sided with Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — to leave intact a lower court’s decision scrapping NIH guidance documents that described the agency’s policy priorities.
Gorsuch stressed that the district court’s actions were not a “one-off,” pointing to two other recent cases where lower courts resisted Supreme Court orders.
In July, the justices ruled 7-2 to block a district court’s attempt to override the high court’s order allowing Trump to resume third-country deportations. Even Justice Elena Kagan, who had dissented from the original ruling, sided with the majority to enforce the order.
“I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed,” she wrote.
That same month, the high court struck down another lower court ruling that sought to block Trump from firing three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The justices had already granted Trump authority in May to dismiss members of administrative agencies.
“All these interventions should have been unnecessary, but together they underscore a basic tenet of our judicial system: Whatever their own views, judges are duty-bound to respect ‘the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress,’” Gorsuch wrote.
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has signed executive orders dismantling Biden-era DEI programs, calling them “radical” and “shameful discrimination.” Last April, the Court upheld Trump’s authority to cut teacher training grants linked to DEI, a precedent Gorsuch said the Massachusetts court ignored in this NIH case.
Since the ruling halts immediate funding, the administration is likely to count it as another win in the series of emergency appeals it has brought to the high court.
In a concurring opinion, Barrett wrote that the case should have been filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington rather than in a district court. That court hears disputes involving federal contracts and could award damages later, but would not provide immediate relief.
The decision reversed U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, who in June ordered NIH to restore the grants after lawsuits from researchers and 16 Democratic-led states. Young used unusually sharp language, declaring: “This represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out.”
It is unclear why the judge legally compelled the Trump administration to fund programs to “raise awareness” about LGBTQ issues or why that is tantamount to “discrimination.”
WH Sends Termination Letters To Many Biden-Appointed US Attorneys
President Donald Trump’s White House sent termination notices to several U.S. Attorneys around the country who had been appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, a move aimed at cracking down on officials who may disobey directives from the new administration.
In the email, the White House’s deputy director for the office of presidential personnel told recipients, “At the direction of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as U.S. Attorney is terminated, effective immediately.”
Though it was not immediately apparent that all of them received the White House termination notices, several U.S. attorneys from Seattle to Maryland have resigned from their positions.
Current and former Justice Department attorneys say that although it is common for U.S. Attorneys to resign following a change in the presidential administration, typically the incoming administration requests their resignations rather than sending them tersely worded termination letters.
More than two dozen of Biden’s appointed U.S. Attorneys remained in their positions as of Wednesday. As of Thursday, their offices said at least three were still employed.
There was no response from the White House. Several requests for comment from the U.S. Department of Justice were not answered.
U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath of San Diego, a Biden appointee, was among those fired. Her office reported late Wednesday that she received notification of her termination from the White House, which also thanked McGrath for her service.
Another Biden appointee, U.S. Attorney Erek Barron of Maryland, sent out a farewell email to the entire office shortly after the termination notices were sent, stating that his tenure “has come to an end.”
“It has been an honor to lead such a talented and dedicated team,” Barron wrote, according to a copy of the email seen by Reuters. He confirmed his departure in a post on LinkedIn on Thursday.
According to a statement sent by email, Ismail Ramsey, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, has also “concluded his leadership” of the position.
According to a spokesperson for her office on Thursday, Seattle-based U.S. Attorney Tessa Gorman also resigned at the president’s request. Gorman was initially appointed on an interim basis by now-former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and then by the judges in the Western District of Washington.
Late Wednesday, Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney Dena King, the top federal prosecutor for the Western District of North Carolina, announced her own resignation.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate approved three ambassadors appointed by President Trump, stationing them in the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Italy, respectively.
All three new ambassadors, Warren Stephens, Tom Barrack, and Tilman Feritta, are billionaires who generously support Trump and other Republicans. They all garnered a few Democratic votes, as did all Republicans.
On Tuesday morning, the upper house approved Stephens as the new ambassador to the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland by a vote of 59-39.
Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton spoke in favor of Stephens, an investment banker from his home state, describing him as a “family man, businessman, philanthropist, and patriot.”
“He is the right person to lead our strong, special relationship with the United Kingdom,” Cotton said, according to The Hill.
Stephens served as President and CEO of Stephens Inc., a Little Rock-based investment banking business, until January.
According to Federal Election Commission records, Stephens donated $1 million to “Our Principles PAC,” a nonprofit that opposed Trump’s first presidential campaign.
However, he donated to Trump-aligned entities in 2019 and 2020, and in 2024, he gave $3 million to MAGA Inc., the primary Super PAC that supported Trump, according to FEC records.
“Warren has always dreamed of serving the United States full time. I am thrilled that he will now have that opportunity as the top Diplomat, representing the U.S.A. to one of America’s most cherished and beloved Allies,” Trump said in December.
The Senate confirmed Barrack, a private equity executive and longtime Trump ally, in 60-36 vote on Tuesday.
