Various Democratic senators took time out of their questioning of Betsy DeVos during her hearing as nominee for the Secretary of Education on Jan. 17 to argue with the chairman of the committee, Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), about whether they should be allowed to have a second round of questions. Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), who was stunned at DeVos’ lack of knowledge about basic concepts and laws related to education, felt that her poor performance warranted additional time slots for senators on the committee to ask questions. The chairman responded that limiting senators to one round of questions was in keeping with the precedence of the committee, but as Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pointed out later in the hearing, multiple rounds had been allowed for President Obama’s nominees who appeared before that committee.

This back-and-forth was a microcosm of the battle over Senate rules and procedures which resulted from the relentless obstruction of President Obama’s nominees by congressional Republicans over the past eight years. Unfortunately, the effects of this battle will be felt for many years, and, as a result, unqualified nominees such as DeVos and Alabama senator and nominee for attorney general Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) will have an unusually easy path to confirmation.

As a Nov. 18, 2016 Washington Post article noted, Trump’s nominees will face fewer obstacles to their confirmation than previous candidates due to the 2013 implementation of new rules by Senate Democrats ― who held the majority at the time,―precluding the Senate from using the filibuster against presidential appointments to the executive and the judiciary. Termed the “nuclear option,” the measure allows nominees to be confirmed with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster. It was a Democratic response to the obstruction of President Obama’s nominees but will now have more wide-ranging consequences, given the historic unpreparedness of many of Trump’s appointments.

Betsy DeVos is a Republican donor and charter school advocate whose political experience outside of her advocacy is limited to being the chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, according to a Nov. 23, 2016 Atlantic article. Her lack of substantive policy experience became evident during her hearing in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. When Senator Franken questioned DeVos about her stance on the debate over proficiency versus growth, he was shocked at her total lack of familiarity with the topic, one which continues to be among the most widely discussed topics in the realm of education policy. Advocates of proficiency want to focus policies on ensuring that students meet certain baseline standards, while proponents of growth make student improvement the key goal of their programs. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) was similarly taken aback when it became clear after a series of questions on DeVos’ willingness to enforce federal laws protecting the right of disabled students to educational opportunities that she did not know that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was a federal law.

There were a number of other embarrassing moments for DeVos during the hearing, including her disproven claim that gun-free zones in schools should not be federally enforced because certain schools in rural areas may need guns to protect students from “grizzlies.” However, the greatest concern remains that the nominee for a position which is supposed to advise the President on education has only, for lack of a better word, an elementary understanding of the most basic matters relating to the topic.

While DeVos is rendered unfit for her assigned position by her lack of qualifications, Senator Jeff Sessions — the nominee for attorney general — has significant experience as a former attorney general of Alabama and U.S. attorney, but he has a troublesome record on race-related issues. Accusations that Sessions used the N-word to refer to a black county commissioner, gave underhanded praise to the Ku Klux Klan and referred to the NAACP as being “anti-American” prevented him from fulfilling his nomination to be a federal judge in 1986, according to a July 18, 2016 Washington Post article. Sessions’ prosecution of black civil rights activists for helping black voters fill out absentee ballots was also the subject of controversy, as white candidates in Alabama were known to have used the same tactics but were never accused of voter fraud. The jury acquitted the activists of all charges in 1985, according to a Jan. 10 piece in Rolling Stone Magazine. Among those who testified at Sessions’ hearing in 1986 were Senator Ted Kennedy and Coretta Scott King, who said that Sessions’ confirmation would “irreparably damage the work of my husband,” according to a Jan. 19 article in The Nation. The same committee that rejected him 30 years ago will now have a much harder time reprising this outcome for the same nominee due to the inability to filibuster.

Republican obstruction during the Obama administration has caused a domino effect of changes to Congressional rules and procedures which will render ineffective an important check on the power of the executive. It is important to note that many judicial vacancies can lead to large caseloads for federal judges, which can lead to administrative issues in the court system. Thus, holding Democrats accountable for implementing the nuclear option to fill said vacancies is suspect. While the refusal to confirm Obama’s most recent Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, has been the most famous case of Republican obstruction, the nuclear option actually does not apply to Supreme Court nominees. However, lower court judicial appointments and all other executive nominees saw historically low levels of confirmation under Obama. According to a study by the Congressional Research Center, cited in a May 16, 2016 Daily Beast article, Obama had 198 presidential nominees confirmed while Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had 345 and 268, respectively. The report states that Obama had the lowest number of confirmed appointments in 30 years. Comparing the rates of confirmations by the Senate under Obama to Democratically controlled Congresses makes it clear that these low numbers are not the result of innocent attempts at vetting nominees more thoroughly. According to a May 5, 2016 Washington Post article, the GOP Senate under Obama confirmed 38 percent as many judges as the 2008 Senate and 21 percent as many as the 1992 Senate, both of which were under Democratic control.

For the Senate to function to the best of its ability regarding appointments, there must be a combination of adherence to traditional rules along with proper discretion on the part of Senators to conduct themselves with fairness. There will always be ideological differences between nominees and the opposing party of the president, but in order to function properly, Senators should reserve votes against nominees for those whose disqualifications extend beyond purely intellectual differences, much like DeVos and Sessions.

Republican obstructionism has laid the groundwork for how Washington will operate in the upcoming administration. Their efforts to block Obama’s nominees have had even more far-reaching effects than they likely imagined, as the nuclear option invoked by Democrats in response to them has led to easier paths to confirmation for President Trump’s nominees. Given the president’s incredibly low approval ratings and the historical trend of presidents losing in their first midterm election, there could very well be a situation when the Democrats find themselves back in charge of Congress very soon. Their willingness to use good judgment in areas such as confirming presidential nominees will be significant to restoring respect and proper conduct to a body which has sacrificed those virtues in the blind pursuit of power in recent years.