User’s Manual: Why some Trump nominees could be confirmed with a voice vote – and why some could not

The Senate will likely have a few Cabinet nominees who are relatively non-controversial. In the interest of time, senators could agree to expedite the process and confirm an individual nominee or several nominees by voice vote or unanimous consent.

As long as there are no objections among all 100 (currently 99) senators.

This speeds things up in the Senate, where floor time is at a premium.

However, there’s a good reason why some Democrats may oppose a streamlined process for this.

It’s not because they’re trying to clog up the Senate plumbing. Democrats may demand a roll call vote on nominees they support in order to show that they voted in a bipartisan fashion to confirm some of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees.

Democrats are likely to reject the nomination of Pete Hegseth to be Defense secretary. However, other relatively easy to confirm nominees like Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., picked to serve as secretary of state, or Sean Duffy for Transportation secretary, could require roll call votes.

As a result, Democrats can then argue that they voted in favor of “X” number of Mr. Trump’s nominees – and argue they operated in a bipartisan fashion.