Congress

Mike Lee could soon be in position to grant Trump a big Senate wish

Published

2 hours ago

September 23, 2026

Donald Trump has long fumed over a Senate practice that lets Democrats effectively veto some of his judicial nominees. He might soon have an ally in a position to do something about it.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee is poised to chair the Judiciary Committee should Republicans manage to keep control of the Senate in the midterms. That would give the MAGA stalwart the power to decide the fate of the “blue slip,” which lets senators block any home-state district court judge, federal marshal or U.S. attorney nomination they oppose.

The decision risks pitting Lee against his Senate GOP colleagues, many of whom support the status quo. It also all but guarantees a public pressure campaign from Trump, with whom Lee has worked to ingratiate himself over the past two years.

Lee said in an interview that he didn’t expect to eliminate blue slips — actual pieces of paper senators sign to indicate their support for a nominee — but he left the door open to changing how the tradition is enforced.

“There is no appetite to just get rid of them,” Lee said before adding, “The blue slip itself has had a lot of evolution and it’s almost never static. Though it doesn’t mean that everything about the blue slip procedure will always be the same.”

Lee said it was “premature” to discuss in detail how he would approach the matter and noted it had undergone “iterative changes” as previous Judiciary chairs had “considered and in many many cases implemented [alterations] just in order to deal with things as they happen.”

Trump has a simpler view of the matter — demanding Senate Republicans completely ditch the blue slip, which he views as an intolerable fetter on his power to install federal judges. Current Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has repeatedly fended off Trump’s calls to end the practice, explaining that most of his fellow senators have no interest in giving up leverage in who gets home-state appointments.

Asked how the White House would want Lee to handle blue slips, a spokesperson pointed back to several of the president’s comments over the past year, including an October 2025 Truth Social post where he called it an “old and ridiculous custom.” Trump targeted Grassley directly last December, saying that it was “shocking” that he would allow “this scam to continue.”

More recently, Trump lamented the “ridiculous views of Republicans on blue slipping” when he temporarily backed off Jay Clayton’s director of national intelligence nomination, which derailed a bipartisan surveillance deal. Clayton himself had previously been caught in a blue slip fight after Trump nominated him as U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and Trump feared a repeat.

While Senate colleagues widely expect Lee to face the same pressure from Trump that Grassley has endured, several Republicans indicated in interviews they hope Lee sticks to precedent.

“I think, you know, he’s a traditionalist, and I think he’ll honor the blue slip,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a longtime Judiciary Committee member who is leaving the Senate at the start of next year.

For one thing, Lee is likely to face immense peer pressure. While Lee could unilaterally scrap or modify the blue slip precedent as Judiciary chair, he’d risk angering some fellow Republicans who want to keep control of nominations in their back yards — including under future Democratic administrations.

“Senators have few prerogatives and tools, and that’s one of them,” Cornyn said.

Lee also confronts the prospect that, in a thin GOP majority, a small number of fellow Republican senators could hem him in by pledging to oppose any nominees that do not have home-state-senator support.

Grassley nodded to that reality amid Trump’s pressure last year, posting on X that “a U.S. Atty/district judge nominee without a blue slip does not [have] the votes to get confirmed on the Senate floor & they don’t [have] the votes to get out of [committee].”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he would vote in committee and on the floor to preserve the blue slips.

“I know who is qualified in my state to be a federal judge a lot better than somebody in Washington, D.C., does,” Kennedy said, predicting that Republicans would be able to “outvote” Lee were he to move to eliminate them.

With the GOP unlikely in the next Congress to maintain the three-vote cushion it now enjoys, Lee would need to convince potentially every Republican on the Judiciary Committee — and nearly every Republican in the chamber — to back him up.

That could be difficult, given the strong support within the Republican conference for keeping the blue slip as is, according to two GOP aides granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. Lee’s emerging role will also require him to win over many of the same colleagues he has alienated over the past year with his advocacy for a partisan elections bill that has no clear path to passage.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said late last year that there are “way more Republican senators who are interested in preserving” the blue slip “that those who aren’t.”

“I have to assume everybody supports the blue slip,” Grassley said in an interview Tuesday, voicing his support for keeping it as-is.

“A president of the United States can’t know exactly what is going on in those individual states, and you need to guarantee senator input for marshals, U.S. attorneys, and district judges,” he said.

That said, Lee is correct that the blue-slip precedent has already been eroded: Republicans effectively ended the practice for circuit judges during Trump’s first term, arguing at the time that courts of appeals cover broad regions and thus shouldn’t be subject to veto by a single state’s senator.

Lee said amid that debate in a 2018 Judiciary Committee hearing that the blue slip “is not, and never has been, codified as a rule.”

“Its use as a de facto veto has definitely been the exception rather than the rule,” Lee said.

During his second term, Trump has erupted over instances where Democrats have used the blue slip to block — or at least complicate — the confirmations of his favored nominees.

Schumer and fellow New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand refused to greenlight Clayton’s U.S. attorney nomination; he was later appointed to the job by Manhattan’s federal judges.

But New Jersey Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim successfully blocked the nomination of Alina Habba to become their state’s permanent U.S. attorney last year, and Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney in Southern California, Bill Essayli, was also sidelined due to Democratic opposition.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Judiciary Democrat and a prior chair of the committee, said that he was largely in the dark about Lee’s views on the blue slip but urged the Utah Republican to “think twice” before undoing it.

“I stuck with it through thick and thin,” Durbin said. “A lot of people who criticized me as chairman for observing it thanked me after we lost the majority. … So I hope he sticks with it.”

Congress

Capitol agenda: Republicans riddled by stay-or-go dilemma

Published

2 hours ago

September 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republican senators are stuck in a fight or flight dilemma as they weigh their midterm strategy this week.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune hasn’t made a call yet about cutting the session short to get lawmakers back on the campaign trail or keeping them in Washington to try and address growing voter unease with inflation and gas prices fueled by President Donald Trump’s war in Iran.

Republicans will discuss the schedule during their closed-door caucus lunch Wednesday afternoon, two people granted anonymity to discuss planning tell Blue Light News.

“We ought to be doing anything we possibly can to try to help” lower the cost of living, Sen. Jim Justice said. “The problem is everybody is running to get out of the doors and everything so they can go preserve their ability to get reelected.”

As of now, the chamber will spend its final days this week focused on passage of a college sports bill, setting up a split screen between the real economic pain hitting Americans and the relatively light stakes of the chamber’s floor agenda. That in itself is adding to the anxiety of some GOP lawmakers raising concerns their majority is in real peril.

At the same time, it’s unclear whether lawmakers can reach a consensus on any consequential legislation in such a short window to address rising costs, and any successful bills would sit idly in the now recessed House.

Still, a handful of senators are making last-ditch appeals for legislative action.

Sen. Jon Husted told reporters Tuesday he’s hoping for a vote on his bill to curb data center-related energy costs.

“It’s foolish both policy-wise and political-wise not to put it on the floor,” Sen. John Kennedy said about Husted’s bill.

Sen. Roger Marshall, who like Husted is locked in a closer-than-expected race, floated a vote on his long-stalled bill capping credit card “swipe fees” — which he said would “lower the cost of gasoline two or three percent” for those putting it on plastic.

And Sen. Susan Collins said she wants to see her bipartisan insulin bill get a vote on the floor next week.

Collins is also pressing for a long-sought bipartisan permitting reform deal to come together this week, which Republicans believe would show voters they are committed to addressing affordability issues.

What else we’re watching:

— PERMITTING DEAL FATE COULD SET UP EXIT: Striking an energy permitting deal could be enough of a reason to keep senators in session longer to vote on it, Thune told Blue Light News on Tuesday night. “If we can get a deal there, that’s something that most of our members believe is really consequential legislation and worthwhile,” Thune said, adding Republicans would discuss the issue at their weekly lunch Wednesday. The deal got new life after Trump signaled he’d ease his administration’s blockade on wind projects to help grease negotiations with Democrats.

— HOUSE GOP LEADERS WEIGH PRE-MIDTERM RETURN: Chatter is picking up in Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership circle about the possibility of a pre-midterm House return — but such a move would likely only happen if the Senate passes energy permitting reform, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. What else GOP leaders must weigh: the chamber’s return would trigger an impeachment vote on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, something Republicans had hoped to avoid before the election. Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz told Blue Light News TUESDAY night he believes the House would come back early to take up his college sports bill if senators pass it this week, but timing would be “a decision for the speaker.”

Jordain Carney, Josh Siegel, Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy and Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.

Congress

As midterm prospects grow bleaker, Senate Republicans wonder what they can do about it

Published

2 hours ago

September 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Facing rising gas prices, an Iran war with no end in sight and increasingly dire midterm polling, Senate Republicans are facing a crucial choice this week: fight or flight.

Some GOP lawmakers are caught between their desire to use the rest of the scant pre-election legislative calendar to improve their standing with voters and the likelihood there probably isn’t much they can do anyway.

House Republicans have already fled Washington until after the Nov. 3 election, and the Senate is set to spend the week debating a bipartisan bill overhauling the multibillion-dollar college sports industry with no firm idea of what comes after.

The split screen between the real economic pain hitting Americans and the relatively light stakes of the Senate floor agenda had several anxious GOP lawmakers raising concerns over cost-of-living issues amid signs that their majority is in real peril.

The college sports bill “needs to be done,” said Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), “but I wouldn’t say it’s top priority in the minds of people in North Carolina or in the world.”

“If you list all the problems that they are facing right now, it’s not college sports,” he continued. “Yeah, it’s a problem, but it’s not the top problem. I mean, it’s affordability, it’s fuel prices, it’s grocery prices. It’s getting this war behind us.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is for now keeping his options open about what to do once the college sports legislation is disposed of, and that topic is expected to be discussed during a closed-door GOP lunch Wednesday.

But one very real option is simply joining the House in calling it quits till after the election — which is what several GOP senators and aides who were granted anonymity to speak candidly said they expect to happen this week.

Should they leave, Republican senators would be essentially standing pat with their legislative record, even with voters clamoring for more help while blaming Trump in a spate of recent polling.

“If there was something that we could get done that would help, I’d be all for it,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said when asked about possible legislation to address rising costs. “But I don’t know what it would be at this point.”

The slim hope that any piece of affordability legislation could possibly get across the Senate floor in the final weeks of September has others in the GOP eager to simply get their vulnerable colleagues back on the campaign trail and make their case directly to voters. It’s highly unlikely any bill could get to President Donald Trump’s desk, anyway, given the House’s absence.

So long as senators stay in the Capitol, they are exposing themselves to a barrage of off-message questions about the Iran war and spiraling energy prices — not to mention the latest Trump-related controversies, such as his White House media ban and reports that a Russian oligarch helped finance his son’s wedding.

To keep the focus on affordability, several endangered senators are making last-ditch appeals for legislative action.

They include Republicans who are coalescing behind a plan to have the Trump administration temporarily curb diesel exports — including Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, who is running in a tough race in a state Trump easily won in 2024 — even as oil industry allies warned it would have little effect or potentially even raise prices in some parts of the country.

“American fuel should stay home with Americans,” Sullivan said in a Tuesday statement.

Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) continued to push Tuesday for further action on a bill he authored aimed at getting data center developers to cover their own energy costs. The bill easily passed the House but was blocked from fast-track consideration last week by Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, who argued the measure didn’t go far enough.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said it would be “stupid” for Republicans not to stay in town and jump through the days of procedural hoops required to put Husted’s bill up for a vote.

“When moms and dads lie down and sleep at night, and can’t, they’re not lying there worried about the football coaches, they’re worried about the cost of living,” Kennedy said. “It’s foolish both policy-wise and political-wise not to put it on the floor. … [But] I wouldn’t faint with surprise if Senator Thune said, ‘Y’all go home.’”

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), who is also in a closer-than-expected race, said GOP leaders could put his bill limiting credit card fees up for vote, claiming it would “lower the cost of gasoline two or three percent.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), meanwhile, said she wants to see her bipartisan bill capping insulin prices get a floor vote next week.

“You’re always torn, but I expected to be in session next week,” Collins said when asked if it would be better to stay or go. She added that passing the insulin bill, a stalled appropriations measure and legislation to overhaul energy permitting ”would make a real difference.”

Only the energy permitting bill still appears to have a shot of reaching the Senate floor — and senators and aides acknowledge it’s a long one. Republicans believe it would let them show voters they are capable of addressing cost-of-living issues before the election, even if the effects of the legislation won’t be felt for years. Some Democrats believe now is the best time to win concessions from the Trump administration that could help achieve clean energy goals.

Thune pointed to the ongoing permitting talks as one of the reasons that the schedule remains “up in the air” — calling it “something I think most of our members believe is really, really consequential legislation and worthwhile.”

During a floor speech Tuesday, Thune touted the work already done by Republicans, saying they had “spent the last two years delivering on our agenda” — putting “more money in your pocket,” working to lower taxes for families and making “homeownership more affordable.”

But he also acknowledged the political headwinds facing his party in the midterms, telling reporters that he was “hopeful” about their chances of keeping the majority but also “realistic.”

“It’s a very competitive environment out there — a lot of tight races, many of them in the margin of error,” Thune said, but added that Republicans had superior candidates, an aggressive ground game and a “compelling message.”

Kelsey Brugger and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

The future of the ‘blue slip’ could be in Mike Lee’s hands

Published

5 hours ago