Trump slams ‘blue slip’ tradition in Senate
Legal and political strategist Katie Zacharia weighs in on a longtime political tradition possibly changing and the latest update on the status of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on ‘Fox News @ Night.’
President Trump is rightfully angry that some of his top choices for U.S. attorneys in Democrat-controlled states are being blocked by Democrats and their leftist allies in the judicial branch. But the recent attacks from some supporters of the president against Sen. Chuck Grassley, Trump’s most effective ally in the Senate, are misplaced.
To start, remember who Grassley is. He’s a dignified statesman but also a shrewd legislator, fearless investigator and Senate workhorse. He doesn’t chase the limelight but quietly puts one win after the other on the scoreboard for Trump and his MAGA agenda.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, participates in a hearing on the attempted assassination of then-former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally, convened by the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees in Washington, D.C., July 30, 2024. (Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
This isn’t bluster. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, and two were carried squarely on the shoulders of Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. He stopped former President Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court seat with Merrick Garland, Joe Biden’s anti-Trump lawfare-supporting AG, enabling Trump to install Justice Neil Gorsuch instead. And when Democrats tried to ruin Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s life and derail his nomination, it was Grassley’s steady hand that guided Kavanaugh through the partisan spectacle, shut down the lies and got him confirmed.
Grassley’s done more than anybody in Congress to expose partisan lawfare against Trump. It’s thanks to Grassley that we know of the existence of Arctic Frost, Jack Smith and the Biden FBI’s demented campaign to put Trump behind bars and make any Republican that so much as breathed a subject of a criminal investigation.
Whistleblowers at the FBI knew they could only trust one man to bring these damning details to light: Chuck Grassley. Now we know the Biden Justice Department and complicit judges spied on Republican members of both the House and the Senate and sought records for hundreds of other MAGA patriots, many of whom are a part of Trump’s administration today, like Dan Scavino, Peter Navarro and Harmeet Dhillon, who Grassley led to confirmation as Judiciary Committee chairman.
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In fact, Grassley is literally breaking his own records when it comes to Senate confirmations. He’s processing and confirming judges at a rate faster than in Trump’s first administration, when Grassley was also Judiciary chairman. He navigated the vicious onslaught to confirm Judge Emil Bove, flipping the 3rd Circuit to majority Republican appointees. He bulldozed opposition and confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and other Justice Department leaders.
He’s also processing U.S. attorneys through his committee faster than Democrats did during the Biden administration. And he’s doing it all while leading the charge against judicial activism and unconstitutional universal injunctions. And the billions of dollars the administration received in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill to secure our border and lock up dangerous criminals? Those border security provisions were written by none other than — you guessed it — Chuck Grassley.
Lindsey Halligan, left, and Alina Habba have been blocked by Democrats using the blue slip tradition. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
We're on pace to see the same number of attorney confirmations by year’s end as in Biden’s first year. But a few of his top choices — friends of mine and fellow warriors like Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan— have been stopped by Democrats using a century-old "blue slip" rule.
Sideline commentators and keyboard warriors seem to think Grassley could just bang his chairman’s gavel and make the blue slip go away. But is Grassley, the man who’s done so much for Trump, really sandbagging these nominees? The answer, for those who care to actually do their homework, is no.
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The blue slip should go, but Grassley can’t just make it happen alone. He needs votes to advance nominees, and he doesn’t have them without blue slips. Months ago, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., stated unequivocally on the Senate floor he wouldn’t confirm nominees without one. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., echoed this. That ends the conversation. Without the vote of either of these two members of the Judiciary Committee, nominees fail, regardless of Grassley’s actions.
And Tillis and Kennedy are hardly alone. Senators, both Republican and Democrat, won’t soon give up this power. All 100 senators prioritize having a say in who gets to be a judge or prosecutor in their state over letting the president decide who serves in other states. That’s why Democrat Dick Durbin couldn’t get rid of the blue slip when he chaired the Judiciary Committee during the Biden administration, even though progressive activists and their media allies begged him to do it.
Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before the House Judiciary Committee Sept. 20. (AP/Jose Luis Magana)
Senators also won’t get rid of the blue slip because they know it benefits them when they’re in the minority. Republicans used the blue slip to block Biden from appointing nearly 30 district judges, and, so far, Trump has nominated 15 bold constitutionalist judges to fill the seats that Republicans held open.
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I don’t like blue slips, but I live in the real world. I can count votes, and I know blue slips aren’t going away. As the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chief counsel for nominations, working for Grassley in Trump’s first term, I helped end blue slips for circuit judges because their jurisdictions cover multiple states and therefore their fates obviously shouldn’t be determined by a single state’s senators. That was a major achievement, but the limit of what was possible for now.
Democrats will stop at nothing to evade accountability, and Trump shouldn’t let them. His administration should use every tactic to overcome obstruction and pursue lawfare perpetrators. He’s right to want the blue slip’s end. But the Senate simply won’t deliver it this Congress as the votes don’t exist, and the president’s public outrage unfortunately hasn’t moved the needle yet.
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As I’ve said before, to abolish the blue slip, the administration must build support by securing commitments from at least 50 Republican senators, including every Senate Judiciary Republican, to vote for nominees without blue slips. Grassley wants Trump’s nominees to succeed and knows the votes currently aren’t there for nominees who don’t have blue slips. Trump should trust his most effective Senate ally’s judgment. Grassley is a workhorse, not a showhorse. And Grassley has delivered more for Trump than any other senator.
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