Trump Fumes Over ‘Blue Slip’ Rule Blocking His Nominations for Prosecutors, Judges

President Trump is reiterating his call for the Senate to change its rules around judicial and prosecutorial confirmations as the rate of new Senate approvals has slowed. The GOP has already changed the rules around how quickly executive branch nominees can be confirmed, though Mr. Trump’s frustration with the sluggish pace of confirming new judges and prosecutors has only grown in recent weeks.Mr. Trump has fumed for months about the Senate’s inability to move more quickly on his nominees. Earlier this year, Senate Republicans voted to approve a rule change that would allow the chamber to vote on slates of dozens of executive branch nominees at one time with a simple majority vote, rather than the 60-vote threshold for speedy confirmation.That rule change did not apply, however, to judgeships. On Monday, Mr. Trump was asked in the Oval Office about the “blue slips,” a tradition in the Senate giving lawmakers the ability to veto nominees for judgeships or prospectorial positions in their home states. For example, Mr. Trump’s nomination of Lindsey Halligan to be the permanent U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia can be blocked by just one of the state’s two Democratic senators.“As a Republican president, I am unable to put anybody in office having to do with U.S. attorneys or having to do with judges,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I think blue slips are a disgrace.”“They should not be relevant anymore. This is a different world than it was 15, 20 years ago. That was a gentleman and gentlewoman world. This is a little bit different, unfortunately,” Mr. Trump said. With the past Senate rule change, blue slips are one of the last processes in the Senate by which Democrats are able to block Mr. Trump’s nominees. As he nears the end of his first year back in office, it is clear that Mr. Trump’s district court confirmations are falling well behind the rate of his predecessors. To date, just 20 federal district court judges have been confirmed to their positions. The Senate is not scheduled to vote on any other district court judge nominations before the end of the year. Compare that to his predecessor, President Biden, who was able to confirm 29 of his district court nominees before the end of his first year in office. With respect to the confirmation of U.S. attorneys, Mr. Trump is again lagging far behind Mr. Biden. So far in 2025, the Senate has confirmed only 18 federal prosecutors to their posts to serve in the Trump administration. By the end of 2021, the Senate had confirmed 31 of Mr. Biden’s U.S. attorney nomineesEarlier in the day on Monday, Vice President JD Vance said that the blue slip process must be done away with. When he was in the Senate, he never used the mechanism to block any of Mr. Biden’s nominees. “The single biggest obstacle to prosecuting violent leftists is judges and prosecutors in deep blue areas who think violence is OK if you’re a leftist. This is why we must get rid of the blue slip process. It’s an institutional safeguard that has long outlives its purpose,” Mr. Vance wrote on X. “[I]t would be really nice to have judges and prosecutors who didn’t make that work more difficult.”The greatest guardians of the blue slip tradition have been some of the more seasoned members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including the chairman, Senator Chuck Grassley. Earlier this year, Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Grassley by name for keeping the blue slip tradition alive. The following day, the Iowa senator hit back at the president. “The people in real America don’t care about what the ‘blue slip’ is, but, in fact, it impacts the district judges who serve theircommunities and the U.S. Attorneys who ensure law and order is enforced. I was offended by what the President said,” Mr. Grassley said at a hearing.At a committee hearing last week, Mr. Grassley reiterated that he was trying to move as quickly as possible in keeping with the tradition of the Senate. He took a clear shot at the president’s staff for not sending nominees along in a timely manner. “I’d like to process even more judicial nominees, but I’m waiting on the President to submit nominations,” “[W]ith judicial nominees, I’d like to process even more U.S. Attorneys, but I’m hamstrung waiting for background investigations and other paperwork from the administration that the Committee needs to advance the nominees we haven’t moved already.”The majority leader, Senator John Thune, has stood by his institutionalist colleagues who have been defending the blue slip process. “It doesn’t apply to circuit court judges. It obviously doesn’t apply to the Supreme Court,” Mr. Thune told Fox News last week when asked about the blue slip process. He says that it should be of little concern because blue slips apply only to district court judges and prosecutorial nominees. “This is a procedure that’s been in place for a long time that both Republicans and Democrats support because it gives them some input,” Mr. Thune said. “I don’t think it’s gonna change. It’s been in place for a long time.”“There are Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and off the Judiciary Committee, for that matter, who support this and support it strongly,” he said. Mr. Trump’s gripes on Monday did not end with the blue slips, however. He also says the Senate should ditch the filibuster — another key demand he has made in the past, only for it to be ignored. “If you knocked out the filibuster, it would all go away,” he said after being asked about a health care reform deal with Democrats. “If you did that, we’d get voter ID, you’d have no mail-in voting — all things that make our elections dishonest — and you’d get a lot of other things having not even to do with voting.”

Trump Fumes Over ‘Blue Slip’ Rule Blocking His Nominations for Prosecutors, Judges

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