Thune Tees Up Senate Vote for Arielle Roth
Thune filed a motion to invoke cloture on her nomination Tuesday.
WASHINGTON, July 16, 2025 – Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., moved on Tuesday to tee up a confirmation vote for Arielle Roth, President Donald Trump’s pick to run the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Thune filed his cloture motion on her nomination sometime around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, according to Senate staff posts on social media.
Cloture is a means of limiting debate on an issue to 30 hours, after which a vote is taken. Since the matter at issue is a nomination rather than legislation, the motion to invoke cloture on Roth's confirmation would need a simple majority to pass.
The Senate planned Wednesday to debate its rescissions package until 1:30 p.m. before proceeding to a “vote-a-rama” on amendments. Republicans are looking to claw back $1.1 billion in funding from public broadcasting and radio services like NPR and PBS, plus $8.3 billion in foreign aid.
A spokesperson for Thune said it was highly unlikely Roth would get a vote Wednesday because of the vote-a-rama.
Roth serves as telecom policy director for Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas. As head of NTIA, she would be the White House’s top telecom advisor and oversee the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.
The agency released new rules for the program on June 6, rescinding the Biden NTIA’s approval of state spending plans and requiring every state broadband office to hold an additional round of bidding.
BEAD rules are now less explicitly favorable to fiber – Roth, like Cruz and members of the Trump administration, has been critical of the program’s preference for fiber, which has the highest available capacity but can cost more to deploy. States are well into their new bidding rounds, and it’s not yet clear how significantly funds will be shifted from fiber to fixed wireless or satellite.
States’ spending plans under the new rules are due to the agency Sept. 4. When the Senate Commerce Committee considered Roth’s nomination in April, all Democrats voted against her except Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said she would do everything she could to hold up Roth's nomination after the Trump NTIA took federal approval from her state's BEAD plan.
Roth is married to Yaakov Roth, the principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s civil division.
This story was updated to include comment from Thune's office.
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