Nominations and Senate confirmations

The Constitution gives the president the power to nominate and the Senate the power of advice and consent. In practice that means a two-stage process: the president transmits a formal nomination, and the Senate decides whether to hold a vote on it. Thousands of positions require this, from cabinet secretaries and federal judges to agency commissioners and ambassadors.

The threshold has changed twice in the last fifteen years. A 2013 rule change removed the sixty-vote requirement for most nominations; a 2017 change extended that to Supreme Court nominees. Since then, confirmation requires a simple majority of senators voting - which means a party holding the chamber can confirm without a single vote from the other side.

That is why the interesting question is almost never whether a nominee could win a vote. It is whether the majority leader schedules one, whether the committee reports the nomination, and whether the nominee survives long enough to get there.

Personnel is policy in a system where agencies write most of the rules. Who runs the financial regulators, the energy department, the trade agencies and the antitrust divisions shapes the regulatory environment more directly than most legislation does, and on a much shorter timescale.

Judicial confirmations are the most durable. Federal judges serve for life, so a confirmation locks in a decision-maker for decades - which is why these fights are the most partisan and the most closely watched of all.

For markets specifically, central bank appointments matter most. A governor or chair confirmation changes the expected policy path directly, and rate markets reprice on the nomination rather than on the vote, because the nomination is when the information arrives.

A nomination is referred to the committee with jurisdiction, which holds a hearing, may demand documents and written answers, and then votes on whether to report the nomination to the full Senate. Committee chairs control that schedule, so a chair who is unenthusiastic can delay a nomination for months without ever rejecting it.

For district court judges, a long-standing courtesy known as the blue slip gives home-state senators effective veto power over whether a hearing happens at all. It is a norm rather than a rule, its scope has been narrowed and restored repeatedly, and it explains why some judicial vacancies sit empty for years.

Two calendar rules catch markets out. Nominations not acted on are returned to the president at the end of a session and must be resubmitted, and a nomination lapses entirely at the end of a Congress. Meanwhile, an appointment made while the Senate is in recess can install someone without a vote, though such an appointment expires at the end of the next session - and the Senate's use of brief pro forma sessions has made genuine recess appointments rare since a 2014 Supreme Court ruling.