Senate confirms 49 Trump nominees in single en bloc vote

On May 18, 2026, the Senate voted 51-46 to confirm 49 of President Trump's executive nominees in a single en bloc vote under Senate Resolution 690. The package — confirmed at 5:30 p.m. — was the largest single-vote nominee advance in the 119th Congress. Nominees included U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Marshals, ambassadors to countries including Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and assistant secretaries at the Departments of Defense, State, Commerce, and Transportation.

Under the traditional process, each of those 49 nominees would require its own calendar placement, cloture motion, two-day waiting period, and separate vote — consuming more than 160 hours of floor time in total. The en bloc mechanism compressed that entirely into a single procedural track.

S.Res.690 was adopted on May 11, 2026, by a vote of 46-45, with nine senators not voting, including Republicans John Curtis (UT), Bill Hagerty (TN), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Pete Ricketts (NE), and Jim Risch (ID), and Democrats Michael Bennet (CO) and Patty Murray (WA). The resolution authorized the Senate to take up all 49 listed nominations in a single executive session without requiring individual cloture votes or floor debate on each.

Three days later, on May 14, the Senate voted 51-46 on a strict party-line to invoke cloture on the package. Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) did not vote on cloture.

The en bloc confirmation mechanism didn't exist before September 2025. Under previous Senate rules and precedents, considering multiple nominations at once required unanimous consent — meaning a single objecting senator could force individual votes. In September 2025, the Republican majority used the nuclear option to reinterpret Rule XXII, lowering the threshold for cloture on en bloc nomination resolutions from three-fifths to a simple majority.

That change first paid off on October 7, 2025, when the Senate confirmed a record 107 Trump nominees in a single vote under S.Res.412. S.Res.690 on May 18 was the third such use and the largest package of the 119th Congress's second session.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution gives the Senate power to advise and consent on presidential nominations. The traditional floor process — committee hearing, calendar placement, cloture, two hours of post-cloture debate, final vote — was designed to give senators individual opportunities to scrutinize nominees before confirmation.

The CRS report R48729, published November 2025, analyzed how the Senate's en bloc reinterpretation affects that constitutional role. It found the change does nothing to the committee vetting stage — nominees still clear Judiciary, Armed Services, Foreign Relations, or other relevant committees before joining an en bloc package. The floor vote is the last step affected.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) framed the en bloc strategy as a response to Democratic obstruction. Thune argued Democrats were deploying delay tactics on nominees who had cleared committee with bipartisan support, and that forcing individual floor votes was "Trump derangement syndrome on steroids." By May 2026, the en bloc process had confirmed well over 100 Trump nominees in the 119th Congress.

Thune introduced S.Res.690 on April 27, 2026. The Brookings Institution noted in 2025 that the rule change saves floor time — 107 nominees would have consumed 378 hours individually; the en bloc approach used about 62 hours — but does not alter committee scrutiny.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) opposed each en bloc resolution throughout the 119th Congress. Schumer characterized the Republican approach as transforming the Senate's duty from "advice and consent" to "obey and confirm," arguing that bundling nominees concealed how bad individual picks were from the public.

Democrats held unified opposition across every en bloc vote in the 119th Congress, with zero Democratic crossovers. Republicans countered that the rule still allows their own senators to object to individual nominees before a package is finalized, preserving majority-party accountability while stripping minority-party delay power.

Nominees in the S.Res.690 package were not Cabinet secretaries or Article III judges — both categories explicitly excluded from the en bloc mechanism. The eligibility rules require that included nominees be pending on the Executive Calendar with an assigned calendar number and not hold positions at Level 1 of the Executive Schedule. U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Marshals, and ambassadors are traditional sub-Cabinet positions that meet those criteria.

U.S. Attorneys and U.S. Marshals are also subject to senatorial courtesy, a tradition where home-state senators signal opposition to nominees from their states. The Senate Judiciary Committee does not typically hold hearings for U.S. attorneys or U.S. marshals — so the floor debate foregone by the en bloc process was often the only public venue for senators to raise concerns.

The September 2025 rule change itself passed through a series of parliamentary maneuvers. Republicans submitted a point of order claiming that blocking en bloc consideration was unconstitutional; the presiding officer rejected the point of order; then a simple majority voted to overrule the chair — establishing a new precedent without formally amending the written Senate rules. This is the nuclear option: using majority vote to reinterpret rules that would otherwise require a two-thirds vote to change.

The Constitution sets no specific confirmation procedures. Article II requires Senate consent but leaves the mechanics entirely to the Senate's own rules. That flexibility is what makes procedural reinterpretations — whether the 2013 majority-cloture change on nominations, the 2017 extension to Supreme Court nominees, or the 2025 en bloc change — durable once established.

The S.Res.690 confirmation completed a three-vote sequence spanning eight days: S.Res.690 adopted May 11 (46-45); cloture invoked May 14 (51-46); en bloc confirmation May 18 (51-46). Each vote was party-line. No Democrat voted for any step; no Republican voted against the final confirmation.

The Appointments Clause of Article II covers a broad range of positions — ambassadors, principal officers, and inferior officers the Congress designates for presidential appointment. U.S. Attorneys are inferior officers confirmed under this clause. The en bloc mechanism changes only how the Senate processes them on the floor, not the constitutional requirement that the Senate vote.