The Senate is rumbling toward a fight over changing its rules to confirm more of President Donald Trump’s appointees.

Majority Leader John Thune should be careful what he wishes for — but the system isn’t working.

The problem is that the Senate has been slow and getting slower in confirming executive-branch officials.

Trump only has four years, and two-thirds of the way into his first year, he’s been able to fill only about 100 of the 700 open positions — and that’s without even considering appointments of judges.

Some 150 nominees are now sitting awaiting a vote.

The problem didn’t start with Trump; Senate Republicans threw sand in the gears for Joe Biden, too.

But it has been getting worse, and it thwarts the basic design of the presidency under which the president should get to pick his team and govern with energy.

It was once customary to wave through uncontroversial nominees with unanimous consent without a floor vote; that just isn’t happening in 2025, as Democrats with few other levers of power are reduced to raising roadblocks out of spite.

Fixing the problem shouldn’t go so far that it turns the Senate into a rubber stamp, however.

The Constitution requires the Senate’s advice and consent for ambassadors, Supreme Court justices and other senior officials, and that’s a key part of how the Senate places a check on the president.

But it also allows “inferior officers” to be appointed by the president or by the heads of departments.

The Senate’s role in confirming members of the Cabinet is crucial.

Most presidents get at least one of their first choices turned down — this time, it was Attorney General-designate Matt Gaetz, who withdrew long before a vote.

But far too many “inferior officers” are currently required by law to get confirmed, too — a waste of the Senate’s time and an obstacle to getting the government to run properly.

In the worst case, a crisis can come up while the president’s choice isn’t in office to handle it.

The Constitution doesn’t require this: Far fewer of these officials should need to be Senate-confirmed, but changing that requires a new law, which Congress is unlikely to pass soon even though there’s some support in both parties.

One workaround is that presidents can make temporary appointments when the Senate is out for recess.

In January, Trump unwisely demanded that the Senate put itself into recess so that he could install a whole Cabinet of temporary picks.

He overplayed his hand, and for no good reason — every one of his choices after Gaetz got confirmed, and he had the whole Cabinet in place fairly swiftly by DC standards.

That episode left senators skeptical of Trump’s motives in demanding changes to how they do business.

But the current controversy isn’t about the Cabinet, it’s about undersecretaries and assistant secretaries and the like — people the boss should be able to set to work as soon as the boss is in office.

Republicans tried to negotiate with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to break the logjam, but Schumer insisted on tying progress on nominations to unrelated budget demands.

Democrats screamed bloody murder when Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) did something similar under Biden.

Trump publicly told Schumer to “GO TO HELL,” which is where any prospect of a bipartisan deal ended.

The likeliest plan on the table now would allow Thune to bring groups of nominees to the floor in packages, so senators could vote for several of them at once.

That requires changing Senate rules, and doing so by majority vote is known in the Senate as a “nuclear option,” but it’s how both Majority Leaders Harry Reid (D.) and Mitch McConnell (R.) changed the rules to break filibusters of judicial nominations.

A rule change is fair, in the sense that it will apply the same when Democrats have the White House and Republicans are the ones looking to slow things down.

It’s better than just giving Trump an opening for recess appointees, not least because it gets people into office who can serve for the rest of Trump’s term.

But the fact that the shoe can be on the other foot is why Thune shouldn’t go any further than he has to.

McConnell warned Reid that he would live to regret breaking the filibuster for appeals judges, and Mitch served that dish cold four years later when he did the same for Supreme Court justices, making it possible for Trump to get three conservatives on the court whose votes later overturned Roe v. Wade.

It’s less likely that the Senate will abolish the “blue slip,” a tradition by which a single senator can stop a nominee to be a US attorney or district judge in his or her state.

That practice has always been unpopular with everybody but senators, but it’s a power the senators guard jealously in a time when they have few other powers, and keeping a veto over hostile federal prosecutors is particularly important in an age of lawfare.

Congress has surrendered too much of its power, and it shouldn’t be eager to give away more of it.

But the power over who fills middle-management roles in the executive departments ought to be part of the president’s power.

He’s the one who’s responsible if they screw up. Let Trump have his team.

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review.