The Gang of 14 was a bipartisan group of Senators in the 109th United States Congress who successfully, at the time, negotiated a compromise in the spring of 2005 to avoid the deployment of the so-called "nuclear option" by Senate Republican Majority over an organized use of the filibuster by Senate Democrats. The term alludes to the phrase "Gang of Four", used in China to refer to four ex-leaders blamed for the abuses during the rule of Mao Zedong. Background Senate Democrats used the filibuster to prevent the confirmation of ten conservative appellate court candidates nominated by Republican President George W. Bush. In the Republican-controlled 108th Congress, ten Bush judicial nominees were filibustered by the minority Democrats: Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owen, Charles W. Pickering, Carolyn Kuhl, David McKeague, Henry Saad, Richard Allen Griffin, William H. Pryor, William Gerry Myers III, and Janice Rogers Brown. As a result of these ten filibusters, Senate Republican leaders began to threaten to change the existing Senate rules by using what Senator Trent Lott termed the "nuclear option" and which Republicans tended to call the "constitutional option". This change in rules would eliminate filibusters of judicial confirmation votes. The theory behind the "nuclear option" was that the Senate had the right to determine its own rules and that those rules could be determined on the basis of a simple majority vote. Democrats objected that the Senate Rules themselves said that a 2/3 majority was required to change Senate rules. Republicans countered that the Senate's power to govern itself was founded in the Constitution itself and that internal Senate rules could not constrain that power. Republicans had only a two-vote majority in the 108th Congress, so they were in a weak position to implement this procedural maneuver. Things changed by 2005 due to the 2004 elections. President Bush won re-election, and the Republicans gained four Senate seats for a 55–45 majority in the 109th Congress, so the "nuclear option" became a more viable strategy. Because of the political split in the Senate at the time (55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and one Independent), if six Senators from each party could reach an agreement, these twelve could both forestall the "nuclear option" and enable cloture on nominees. A cloture vote on the nomination of Priscilla Owen was scheduled for Tuesday, May 24, 2005. Its predicted failure was expected to start the Republicans moving to "nuclear option". Senate Majority