Today the Senate voted to change the filibuster rules for consideration and approval of Supreme Court nominees. This does not change the rules that often require at least 60 votes to pass legislation in the Senate.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said publicly this week that he will not change the rules for legislation while he is Majority Leader (see coverage here).  The Senate will vote Friday to approve Neil Gorsuch to be a Supreme Court Justice.  Then, the House and Senate will adjourn for a two week Easter recess.
It will be interesting to see what the mood is when Congress returns to D.C. the week of April 24.  They have a lot of work to do; they will need to pass legislation to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year (FY 2017), start the process for funding the government for next year (FY 2018), reconsider how to address Obamacare, continue work on tax reform and an infrastructure bill. The Senate also has the job of confirming another 527 of the 553 key nominees for senior Trump administration positions.  So far, the Senate has approved just 22 of the 43 people nominated.  At this same point in the Obama administration there were 174 total nominations formally delivered to the Senate from the White House with 54 key personnel approved.
For more information, contact Jeff Shoaf at [email protected] or (202) 547-3350.