Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution grants the President of the United States the power to nominate, and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint individuals to certain positions laid out in the Constitution and in subsequent laws.
Scope of Coverage
Nomination records are available on Congress.gov from the 97th Congress (1981-1982) to the present. Current congress information is updated once a day, usually by 8 am.
Nomination Numbering
The Executive Clerk assigns each nomination a number starting with the prefix PN (Presidential Nomination) and followed by a sequence number (e.g., PN1). Numbering begins anew each Congress, so searching on a PN number without specifying a Congress will return nominations with that number from all Congresses.
Each nomination may contain one or more individual nominees. Military nominations, for instance, often contain multiple names. For example, PN1340 (113th Congress) is a single military nomination with 185 nominees.
Nominations with multiple nominees may go through the confirmation process as a single nomination, but they could be partitioned if the nominees follow a different confirmation path. The partitions are identified with a suffix; for example, PN230-1 (114th Congress) and PN230-2 (114th Congress). In Congress.gov, searching on a PN number, such as PN230, without a partition designation will retrieve all partitions of a partitioned nomination.
Privileged Nominations
Most nominations are referred immediately to committees according to the Senate's rules and precedents. The Senate Committee filter allows you to limit a search to nominations referred to a specific committee.
Pursuant to S. Res. 116 of the 112th Congress, certain nominations to specified positions will not be referred to a committee unless a Senator requests the nomination be referred to committee from the Senate floor. These nominations will be listed in the “Privileged Nominations” section of the Executive Calendar and follow a different path to confirmation detailed in S. Res. 116 of the 112th Congress
Find privileged nominations by selecting Privileged Nominations under the Nomination Type filter.
Searching Nominations
You can search nominations from the search bar by selecting Nominations as the source and entering your search terms in the search box. Nominations also are included when you search All Sources.
You also can search nominations using the search form or advanced search, which includes a query builder form and a command line search for using SOLR query syntax. See Search Tools Overview for details on using operators and fields in your search query. Nominations fields can be used in the search bar or the advanced search command line. Search form field equivalents are listed here.
Search Label on Nominations search form
Field Searched
Congress
congressId:
Nomination Type
nominationTypeFacetLimited:
PN Numbers
cite:
Nominee Names
nomineeNameMultiFormat:
Positions
nomineePosition:
Organizations
nomineeOrganization:
Words and Phrases
text:
Words and Phrases - Search Only Actions
nominationActionChild: OR senateActionCode:
Senate Committee
senateCommittee:
State or Territory Indicated
nomineeState:
Nomination Actions
senateActionCode:
Date of Action - Received in the Senate
nominationReceivedDateStr:
Date of Action - Specified Nomination Action
nominationActionDate:
You can narrow your search results by selecting additional criteria from the filters, also known as facets, on the left side of the results page. Filters available for nominations include Congress, Nomination Type, Committee, Status of Nomination, and Nominees with US State or Territory Indicated. See Refining with Filters for more information.
