Trump’s nominees have faced the longest confirmation delays of any administration in the first 200 days. They have waited 74% longer compared with his first term and nearly four times longer than nominees in the Reagan administration.

Happy to share my first @brookings.edu FixGov piece was published today. I take stock of the Senate confirmation process at the 200-day mark of the Trump administration. Among the key findings is the unprecedented degree to which Trump’s nominees have faced procedural barriers.

While nominees used to be able to expect a confirmation process to be completed in around 3 months, there are now much longer waits with a lot more uncertainty. 90% of Reagan’s first term nominees were confirmed in 3 months, while 25% of Biden’s were confirmed in the same time.

This is in large part to increasing procedural barriers. It is now the norm for nominees to go through the cloture process and the expectation for nominees to need a final recorded vote. This requires increased floor time which is precious in the start of a Congress.

Despite the importance of Cabinet secretaries, it has taken recent presidents much longer to get their nominees confirmed. Despite having no nominees withdrawn, Biden still waited until March 22 for his final confirmation.

These delays have caused at least 3 confirmation hearings to be postponed. Despite this, Trump is still about on par with his predecessors on getting hearings scheduled. The last few hearings have been difficult for recent administrations to get scheduled, often due to withdrawals.

By the time Trump named a nominee for each Cabinet department this cycle, his most recent predecessors had named just two or fewer. However, delays in getting MOUs signed with DOJ meant that nominees were announced before completing FBI background checks.