(and I remember a bunch of years ago when this issue came up before and there were attempts to modify the Rule and you may already know this)
Apparently Tom Cotton put a "Hold" on Garland's nomination. What that meant was that even if they tried to move with a motion for cloture, he could essentially delay it ("filibuster" ) it by objecting until he got his concerns addressed. The GOP argued that Democrats did the same with Barr's nomination.
In the past, Senators used to do what were dubbed "secret holds" where all of a sudden, stuff ground to a halt (notably nominations) and "no one" knew who did it. It's one of those arcane rules like the "Blue Slips" (where the Senators from a particular state can weigh in about judicial nominees from their state with a yay or a nay via that "blue slip" form), something that Turtle essentially started ignoring during the latter part of his tenure when he was busy packing the courts instead of considering legislation from the House.
Holds
A hold is a request by a Senator to his or her party leader to prevent or delay action on a nomination or a bill. Holds are not mentioned in the rules or precedents of the Senate, and they are enforced only through the agenda decisions of party leaders. A standing order of the Senate aims to ensure that any Senator who places a hold on any matter (including a nomination) make public his or her objection to the matter.
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Senators have placed holds on nominations for a number of reasons. One common purpose is to give a Senator more time to review a nomination or to consult with the nominee. Senators may also place holds because they disagree with the policy positions of the nominee. Senators have also admitted to using holds in order to gain concessions from the executive branch on matters not directly related to the nomination.
The Senate precedents reducing the threshold necessary to invoke cloture on nominations, and the recent precedent reducing the time necessary for a cloture process, could affect the practice of holds. In some sense, holds are connected to the Senate traditions of mutual deference, since they may have originated as requests for more time to examine a pending nomination or bill. The effectiveness of a hold, however, ultimately has been grounded in the power of the Senator placing the hold to filibuster the nomination and the difficulty of invoking cloture to overcome a filibuster. Invoking cloture is now easier because the support of fewer Senators is necessary, and in most cases, the floor time required for a cloture process is less. The large number of nominations submitted by the President for Senate consideration, however, might still lead Senators to seek unanimous consent to quickly approve nominations.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL31980.html#_Toc5969592
AND
“Holds” in the Senate
May 22, 2014 – January 24, 2017 R43563
The Senate “hold” is an informal practice whereby Senators communicate to Senate leaders, often in the form of a letter, their policy views and scheduling preferences regarding measures and matters available for floor consideration. Unique to the upper chamber, holds can be understood as information-sharing devices predicated on the unanimous consent nature of Senate decision-making. Senators place holds to accomplish a variety of purposes—to receive notification of upcoming legislative proceedings, for instance, or to express objections to a particular proposal or executive nomination—but ultimately the decision to honor a hold request, and for how long, rests with the majority leader. Scheduling Senate business is the fundamental prerogative of the majority leader, and this responsibility is typically carried out in consultation with the minority leader.
The influence that holds exert in chamber deliberations is based primarily upon the significant parliamentary prerogatives individual Senators are afforded in the rules, procedures, and precedents of the chamber. More often than not, Senate leaders honor a hold request because not doing so could trigger a range of parliamentary responses from the holding Senator(s), such as a filibuster, that could expend significant amounts of scarce floor time. As such, efforts to regulate holds are inextricably linked with the chamber’s use of unanimous consent agreements to structure the process of calling up measures and matters for floor debate and amendment.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R43563.html
There's a whole bunch of info out there on the "hold" but suffice it to say, they normally would have reluctantly accommodated his nonsense... But what Schumer apparently did, by waiving the need for a quorum in the chamber at the time, and holding a voice vote of what seems to have been just himself (I think almost everyone if not everyone had cleared out), he shunted aside, without objection, Cotton's "hold" (and expected "floor show" ), and went forward with scheduling the timing for cloture and votes.
THIS is how it played out -
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4950418/user-clip-merrick-garland-cloture
= new reply since forum marked as read
