White House, allies weigh nomination strategy under new Senate rules Top priorities for the White House include the confirmation in December of Jeh Johnson as secretary of homeland security, Mel Watt to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Janet Yellen to chair the Federal Reserve, according to a White House official. Obama also hopes for quick confirmation of three nominees to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which was at the center of the Senate fight, the official said. White House aides and their allies said they have yet to finalize plans for how to push through another 186 executive nominees and 50 judicial nominees awaiting confirmation in the Senate. Decisions about how to move forward rest with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), they said. "There is no document; there is no blueprint," said Robert Raben, a prominent Democratic lawyer close to the White House. In terms of a strategy, everybody's blinking really hard. The presidential nomination process was pushed into uncharted waters after the Senate changed its rules to require a simple majority, rather than 60 votes, to confirm most nominees. White House and Senate Democratic officials cautioned that breaking the personnel gridlock that has defined much of Obama's presidency could remain difficult even with the change. "We will move the folks who are stalled, but it's not within our power to rush them through," said Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson. We will move them along in a timely fashion, but we didn't give ourselves the power to move things faster. At the end of the day, it still has to be a fair vote. The hope is that filibustering these folks is futile and that people will do it less. Patricia A. Millett, one of Obama's three nominees for the D.C. Circuit court, is expected to be confirmed shortly after the Senate returns from Thanksgiving recess on Dec. 9, officials said. Reid is expected to reconsider two other court nominees, Cornelia Pillard and Robert L. Wilkins, soon thereafter. Overall, 189 Obama executive nominees are awaiting confirmation in the Senate, including 85 for Cabinet-level agencies, and their nominations have been pending an average of 140 days, according to White House statistics. There are 53 Obama judicial nominations currently moving through the Senate, 17 of which are awaiting votes on the floor. On average, Obama's nominees waited almost 100 days longer to be confirmed than President George W. Bush's judicial picks, according to Congressional Research Service data distributed by Senate Democrats.