John Thune is the latest leader to threaten the nuclear option for Trump’s nominees 

The “nuclear option” has become one of the Senate’s favorite threats. 

According to Taegan Goddard’s Political Dictionary, “The ‘nuclear option’ is a metaphorical term that refers to a parliamentary procedure in the U.S. Senate allowing for a significant change to the rules by a simple majority vote, instead of the usual two-thirds or three-fifths majority.” 

In other words: it usually takes 60 votes to do anything in the Senate because of the filibuster. Using the nuclear option lets the majority party push things through with just 51 votes.  

Senate Republican Leader John Thune is the latest to reach for it. But he’s hardly the first, and he won’t be the last. Here’s how we got here: 

2003 

Republican leader Trent Lott first coined the term “nuclear option” in spring 2003 while describing a rule change to ban filibusters on judicial nominees. Senate Republicans were angry that Senate Democrats were filibustering many of the federal judges nominated by President Bush.  

But a bipartisan “Gang of 14” – seven Republicans and seven Democrats, including No Labels’ founding chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman – banded together to prevent the nuclear option. 

2013 

A decade after Republicans first floated the idea, Democratic leader Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option on November 21, 2013. Citing “unprecedented obstruction” by Senate Republicans to block President Obama’s nominees, Sen. Reid called for a simple majority vote to change the rules and eliminate the filibuster on all presidential nominees except for Supreme Court justices.  

Sen. Mitch McConnell, whose Republicans were in the minority at the time, warned, “I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, you’ll regret this. And you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.”  

2017 

Sen. McConnell followed through on his threat. On April 6, 2017, Republicans – back in the majority – voted to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. They confirmed Justice Neil Gorsuch by a simple majority the next day.  

2023 

There are over 1,200 positions that require Senate confirmation. To save time, the chamber uses “en bloc confirmation” to approve groups of non-controversial nominees at once. But that can only be done with unanimous consent – if a single Senator objects, the entire package is stalled. 

For several months in 2023, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville objected to every Defense Department nominee to protest the Pentagon’s abortion policies. In response, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar proposed a rule change to allow up to 10 nominees to be confirmed en bloc by a simple majority vote. Her plan excluded Cabinet officials, appellate judges, and Supreme Court justices, and required all 10 nominees to come from the same committee. 

But with Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema opposed, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer didn’t have enough votes to trigger the nuclear option. 

After months of pressure from both parties, Pentagon leaders, and military families, Sen. Tuberville ultimately relented in December 2023 and allowed most of the nominations to move forward.   

2025 

At the time of writing, Republican leader John Thune is preparing to use the nuclear option and push through a version of Sen. Klobuchar’s 2023 proposal.   

Sen. Thune’s plan would allow en bloc confirmation of an unlimited number of presidential nominees at once with a simple majority. It would still exclude Cabinet officials, appellate judges, and Supreme Court justices.  

The Future 

For now, en bloc confirmation still excludes high-profile positions, but it’s only a time before Senate Democrats retaliate. One day in the not-too-distant future, we could see the entire Cabinet confirmed on day one with a single party-line vote. 

The nuclear option, much like budget reconciliation (which lets the majority party pass much of its domestic agenda on a party-line vote) and the rescissions process (which lets the president claw back spending previously approved by Congress), is just another way to work around the filibuster. Every time they’re used or expanded, the filibuster – the last procedural tool left in Congress that forces both parties to work together – erodes even further.   

And once it’s gone, there’s no going back.