{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=F0FCB4E8-8859-46D1-B0D5-CB2C9B746CD7", "Thune: Senate Republicans Break Confirmation Records Amid Historic Obstruction", "2025-12-17", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Clickhereto watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor:\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cMr. President, either today or tomorrow, we will confirm another nominations package, bringing the total number of the president\u2019s nominees confirmed this year to more than 400.\n\n\u201cThat number far exceeds total confirmations in the first year of both President Trump\u2019s previous term and President Biden\u2019s.\n\n\u201cSo it\u2019s an impressive number all on its own.\n\n\u201cBut it\u2019s particularly impressive when you consider the obstacles Democrats have put up.\n\n\u201cMr. President, I\u2019m not exaggerating when I say that President Trump\u2019s nominees have faced a historic level of obstruction from Senate Democrats.\n\n\u201cWhen you look at this term, President Trump remains the only president on record not to have had a single civilian nomination confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote.\n\n\u201cLet me repeat that, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cPresident Trump remains the only president on record not to have had a single civilian nomination confirmed by unanimous consent or voice vote.\n\n\u201cDemocrats have required a roll call vote on every single one of the president\u2019s nominations \u2013 an unprecedented level of obstruction in modern times.\n\n\u201cNow, of course Democrats would like you to believe that they\u2019ve engaged in this historic level of obstruction because the president has put up, in the words of the Democrat leader, \u2018historically bad nominees.\u2019\n\n\u201cThe only problem, Mr. President, is that a lot of these nominees have gotten Democrat votes on final passage.\n\n\u201cSo either Democrats are voting for historically bad nominees, or else something else has been going on here.\n\n\u201cSomething else that looks a lot like petty partisanship.\n\n\u201cIt became abundantly clear a while ago that the real reason Democrats have been dragging out nominations for assistant administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and director of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement is nothing more than petty politics.\n\n\u201cDemocrats cannot deal with the fact that the American people elected President Trump.\n\n\u201cAnd so they\u2019ve engaged in this pointless political obstruction in revenge.\n\n\u201cRepublicans, however, have not been daunted.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve just kept plowing through confirmations, racking up an impressive number of hours in session \u2013 and a historic number of votes \u2013 in the process.\n\n\u201cAnd in September we took steps to restore Senate precedent on largely noncontroversial presidential nominees to ensure that no other president has to face the kind of petty partisanship that President Trump has encountered.\n\n\u201cWhen the American people elect a president, they expect that president to be able to get his or her team in place.\n\n\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that senators should never oppose nominations, but it does mean that nominations should not be held up for purely partisan reasons.\n\n\u201cOr in the words of the Democrat leader just a few short years ago, and I quote: \u2018That doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t disagree. But it does mean when nominees are held up, opposed, or blocked\u2014it\u2019s for a legitimate purpose, not for leverage in partisan games, to score political points at the expense of public safety.\u2019\n\n\u201cDemocrats have engaged in a lot of partisan games this year, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cBut Republicans have just kept doing our jobs.\n\n\u201cAnd I\u2019m proud of just how much we\u2019ve accomplished on nominations.\n\n\u201cAnd I look forward to continuing to get the president\u2019s team in place in the new year.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=F0FCB4E8-8859-46D1-B0D5-CB2C9B746CD7"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6635698955506086, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}