Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said Monday he’s placing a “blanket hold” on President Donald Trump’s nominees for the State Department, slowing down his hopes of quickly installing personnel in key positions.
Schatz, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, said his move is in protest of Trump’s billionaire adviser, Elon Musk, declaring that he and the president will shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“Dismantling USAID is illegal and makes us less safe. USAID was created by federal law and is funded by Congress. Donald Trump and Elon Musk can’t just wish it away with a stroke of a pen — they need to pass a law,” Schatz said in a statement.
“Until and unless this brazenly authoritarian action is reversed and USAID is functional again, I will be placing a blanket hold on all of the Trump administration’s State Department nominees,” he continued. “This is self-inflicted chaos of epic proportions that will have dangerous consequences all around the world.”
A “hold” is essentially a threat to prevent a speedy vote for a nominee in the full Senate. It forces Republicans to jump through hoops and burn floor time to confirm them, which adds up when there are many lower-level nominees for the department who might otherwise get fast-tracked to the floor for votes.
Nominees require a majority to be confirmed in the Senate. Republicans have 53 senators, so Democrats cannot scuttle Trump’s picks on their own. But they can drag out the process and detract from other nominees or bills that GOP leaders prefer to spend time on.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday he had been named acting administrator of USAID. Although the Senate voted unanimously to confirm Rubio, there are many high-ranking positions underneath him that also require Senate approval.
Democratic lawmakers gathered Monday afternoon to speak outside USAID’s Washington headquarters to blast the “illegal” shutdown of the agency, accusing Trump and Musk of circumventing Congress.
“We will use every power that we have at our disposal in the US Senate. My colleagues will do the same thing in the House. This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said. “Let’s not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions of dollars off of his business with China. And China is cheering at this action today. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our government right now is doing it based on self interest.”
Holds on nominees were used extensively by Republicans to protest former President Joe Biden’s policies over the last four years.
In 2023, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., placed a hold on over 400 military promotions for 10 months in protest of the Department of Defense’s abortion travel policy.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., briefly placed a blanket hold on civilian nominees for the State Department and the Department of Defense in 2021 in protest of the Biden administration’s handling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
And a group of Senate Republicans placed holds on Biden’s nominees, including judicial nominees, in the wake of court cases that were brought against Trump in 2024.
The Trump administration has yet to formally put forward nominees for many of the vacant ambassadorships and assistant secretary positions that require Senate confirmation. But there are nominees for several key positions within the State Department that are already in the pipeline.
Among those waiting to be confirmed are Elise Stefanik as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, along with those positions immediately under Rubio: Christopher Landau for deputy secretary of state; Michael Rigas for deputy secretary of state for management; and Adam Boehler for special envoy for hostage affairs.
Veteran career foreign service officers or civil servants are currently the acting leadership in these positions, but they are not able to act with the same authority as those who have been tapped by the president for the position. There are currently almost 100 ambassadorships awaiting nominations, according to the American Foreign Service Union, including senior leadership at the U.S. mission to the U.N.
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