GOP Senate Makes Big Move For Trump Over Dem Objections
Senate Republicans took a significant step this week towards addressing the backlog of nominees put forward by President Donald Trump.
On Monday, the GOP confirmed 49 of Trump’s nominees, which means that 60% of his civilian nominations are now finalized.
This marks the fourth time Republicans have confirmed a group of nominees since the Senate altered its rules last year.
The latest batch includes 20 different positions, comprising a dozen U.S. attorneys, several U.S. marshals, ambassadors, and members from various agencies, including the Departments of War, Transportation, and Energy, among others.
Also among the nominees is Stevan Pearce, Donald Trump’s selection to lead the Bureau of Land Management.
Senate Democrats spent much of last year delaying or blocking confirmations for numerous nominees. Traditionally, many civilian nominees had been approved through unanimous consent or voice votes without requiring lengthy floor debates or roll-call votes.
Republicans accused Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats of obstructing confirmations to limit Trump’s ability to reshape the federal government around his policy agenda.
In response, Republicans invoked the so-called “nuclear option” for the fourth time in Senate history, changing chamber rules to lower the threshold for advancing certain nominations from the standard 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster to a simple majority vote, Fox News reported.
The decision has been a good one, if not necessary; last year, the Senate confirmed over 400 of Trump’s nominees.
The confirmation pace also surpassed Trump’s first-term numbers during the same period, when the Senate confirmed 323 nominees during his first year in office.
It also exceeded the total reached by Joe Biden, who had 365 nominees confirmed over a comparable timeframe.
At the same time, Republicans are continuing work on another major component of Trump’s agenda: securing funding for immigration enforcement operations over the next three-and-a-half years.
Republicans are moving quickly through the budget reconciliation process to pass a $72 billion funding package for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the United States Border Patrol by June 1.
GOP lawmakers are aiming to complete work on the measure before the end of the week, as Congress is scheduled to leave Washington for the Memorial Day recess next week.
Meanwhile, a Republican bill proposing $1 billion for the Secret Service to help finance President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom is at risk due to opposition from a senior Senate official, Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.
The bill seeks funding for ICE and Border Patrol in addition to the $1 billion for the ballroom and must be revised to address jurisdictional concerns, according to multiple reports.
“A project as complex and large in scale as Trump’s proposed ballroom necessarily involves the coordination of many government agencies which span the jurisdiction of many Senate committees,” Senate Democrats said after their meeting with the parliamentarian.
“As drafted, the provision inappropriately funds activities outside the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee,” they added.
MacDonough determined that the bill would be subject to the chamber’s 60-vote threshold, meaning it cannot pass with a simple majority, as some legislation can under the budget reconciliation process.
Budget reconciliation is a parliamentary procedure that allows certain fiscal legislation to bypass the Senate filibuster and pass with a simple majority, though strict rules limit what policy provisions may be included, NBC News noted.
The ruling represents a setback for the Republican proposal, but GOP lawmakers are continuing efforts to preserve the ballroom funding provision.
According to a Republican leadership aide cited by NBC News, Senate Republicans had already begun revising the language before Saturday’s ruling based on guidance from Senate officials.
A spokesperson for Judiciary Committee Republicans also told NBC News that “conversations and revisions are continuing, as they have been for days.”
Trump Admin Says It Uncovered $10 Billion Obamacare Fraud Scheme
The Trump administration says it has uncovered what it describes as a massive fraud scheme within the Affordable Care Act.
Members of Trump’s administration allege that roughly $10 billion in taxpayer money was improperly paid out between 2021 and 2024 because of weakened enrollment safeguards under former President Joe Biden.
According to a Department of Health and Human Services report, officials have already removed nearly three million fraudulent or improper Obamacare enrollments and estimate another 2.6 million questionable enrollments remain.
Administration officials say the findings are part of a broader government-wide effort to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse across federal programs.
The report traces the alleged problems to changes made during the Biden administration that expanded enrollment opportunities while relaxing income verification and eligibility checks.
At the start of Biden’s presidency, approximately 10 million people were enrolled through the Affordable Care Act exchanges. By 2024, enrollment had surged to roughly 22 million.
Federal investigators now believe millions of those enrollments were improper, fraudulent, or created without the knowledge of the individuals involved.
“By our estimate, improper, phantom, and fraudulent enrollment peaked at 5.6 million people in 2025,” the report states.
“We estimate 2.6 million improper and phantom enrollments remain, including over 1 million enrollments without a Social Security number.”
According to the report, several different forms of abuse contributed to the alleged fraud.
Officials say some applicants intentionally understated their income to qualify for larger taxpayer-funded subsidies.
Others allegedly received premium assistance despite failing to meet eligibility requirements.
Investigators also identified what they describe as “phantom enrollments,” in which insurance brokers allegedly enrolled people in Obamacare plans without their knowledge to collect federal commissions.
The report argues that reduced verification requirements made those practices significantly easier to carry out.
Since taking office, the Trump administration says it has restored stricter income verification requirements, ended several special enrollment periods, increased screening for duplicate Medicaid enrollment, and launched investigations into brokers suspected of creating phantom policies.
Officials also say they have strengthened oversight of agents participating in the federal marketplace.
As a result of those efforts, nearly three million enrollments have already been removed from the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
Even after those removals, approximately 19.2 million people remain enrolled.
The administration says its goal is not to reduce legitimate coverage but to ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent only on individuals who actually qualify.
“Preserving the fiscal and programmatic integrity of the ACA Exchanges is key to safeguarding taxpayer-funded resources for those that truly need them,” the report states.
“The federal government paying brokers to enroll individuals without their knowledge is not.”
The report also says the administration will continue pursuing additional enforcement actions against brokers and others accused of exploiting the program.
“The Trump Administration continues to aggressively root out fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption by promulgating new regulations to improve program integrity, investigating suspected improper or fraudulent enrollment, and taking action against agents and brokers committing fraud.”
The findings are likely to reignite debate over the Affordable Care Act and how aggressively eligibility rules should be enforced.
Supporters of the administration argue the report demonstrates that stricter oversight is necessary to protect taxpayers and preserve benefits for those legally entitled to receive them.
Critics of previous verification rollbacks have long warned that loosening enrollment safeguards could increase improper payments and fraud, while supporters of the Biden-era policies argued the changes made healthcare more accessible to eligible Americans, Fox News reported exclusively.
The administration says its investigations remain ongoing, with an estimated 2.6 million additional enrollments still under review as officials continue auditing the federal health insurance exchanges.
Trump has been pushing to replace Obamacare for over a decade, and this may give Republicans enough motivation to actually do something.
