Deploying the Nuclear Option
What it took to get Neil Gorsuch on the bench.

The Donald Trump presidency has certainly seen many unprecedented actions but as his term continues we have seen the Senate make some drastic changes in how they do business. Recently, republicans have decided to make an extremely detrimental decision to remove the 60 vote minimum that currently exists in the senate, in order to confirm President Trump’s Supreme Court nomination. This rule has existed for many many years and has been a large player when the senate has previously voted to confirm a supreme court nomination.
Last week, with the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch on the horizon, democrats decided to filibuster to delay the vote. To prevent this, Republicans in congress removed the 60 vote minimum in order to push the vote through. They succeed which means that they no longer need 60 senators to vote yes in order to move the confirmation to a final vote. This so-called “nuclear option” completely eliminates the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. A filibuster is when a senator from the minority party speaks for as long as possible in order to delay and prevent a vote. The filibuster allows the minority party to have more influence over senate decision and is a key element of a democratic legislature. Republicans argue that allowing the filibuster to succeed would cause more damage than overriding Senate precedent to ensure it fails.
Although this may seem drastic, there is precedent for this action. In 2013, Senate Democrats first changed the rules of the senate to block Democrats from Republican filibusters of presidential nominees to lower courts and to government positions but they left the filibuster in place for Supreme Court nominees. This is the rule that Republicans recently removed, which cleared the path for the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch.
The original vote left the Republicans behind. It was 55–45, five short of the needed 60 votes to cut off all debates and move on to a final vote. Removing the 60 vote minimum was the nuclear option, and now that Republicans have deployed it, the Senate will be fundamentally altered. Even before the decision Republicans said that it was their only option.
“This is the latest escalation in the left’s never-ending judicial war, the most audacious yet,” said Majority leader, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell via the New York Times. “And it cannot and it will not stand. There cannot be two sets of standards: one for the nominees of the Democratic president and another for the nominee of a Republican president.”
Most lawmakers agree that Neil Gorsuch is extremely qualified to be on the bench. Despite this, Democrats still attempted to prevent the vote by filibustering. This attempt to block Gorsuch confirmation comes from a place of anger. Many Democrats remain furious over the situation last year of when Judge Merrick B. Garland was nominated by former President Barack Obama. Republicans in the Senate refused to even consider confirming Merrick B. Garland because they said president Obama’s term was nearly up. Democrats also argue that they have found many reasons to not confirm Neil Gorsuch, including his records with workers rights and history with partisan politics. “The more we learned about Judge Gorsuch record, the more we didn’t like him,” said the Democratic leader Senator Chuck Schumer, via the New York Times.
As of April 6th, 2017 the 60 vote minimum rule has been removed from law, demonstrating how the ever changing rules in the Senate will continue to affect us into the future. Most lawmakers agree that abolishing the Senate filibuster further limits the role of the minority party. In doing this, Republicans in the senate cleared the path for Neil Gorsuch who will now be joining The Supreme Court.
