Senate Republicans are staring down a high-stakes week as they try to settle on a plan of attack in their bid to expedite the confirmation of hundreds of President Trump’s lower-level nominees that Democrats have been holding up.

Tensions are still simmering almost a month after senators left Washington after failing to break the logjam and Republicans will return next week on the precipice of changing the chamber’s rules to more easily push the nominees over the finish.

“The expectation is to move a rule change fairly quick,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) told The Hill in a phone interview, noting that conversations in the conference are expected shortly after the Senate reconvenes. “The conference is going to have its input on it. We’ll probably have to massage it some.”

“We all agree that we’ve got to break the logjam that [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer] has created by him filibustering every single nominee except [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio,” Mullin said. “He went nuclear and it’s forced us to have to make a rule change. It shouldn't have to be this way, but he chose to do it this way. [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune said at the beginning of this Congress that we can do it the hard way or do it the easy way, and Schumer has decided to do it the hard way.”

It’s not clear that a rule change will have unanimous support from Senate Republicans.

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