{"id":10456,"date":"2025-06-20T16:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T16:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/rand-paul-gets-behind-a-judicial-nominee-he-previously-blocked\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T16:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T16:02:10","slug":"rand-paul-gets-behind-a-judicial-nominee-he-previously-blocked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/rand-paul-gets-behind-a-judicial-nominee-he-previously-blocked\/","title":{"rendered":"Rand Paul gets behind a judicial nominee he previously blocked"},"content":{"rendered":"
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GOP Sen. Rand Paul is throwing his support behind a home-state judicial pick that he stalled three years ago as part of a feud with his fellow Kentuckian Mitch McConnell.<\/p>\n

Trump said this week he will nominate<\/a> Chad Meredith to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Paul\u2019s office said the libertarian-leaning GOP senator is giving his blessing this time around.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Paul gladly recommended Chad Meredith to the White House alongside Sen. McConnell. He appreciates President Trump nominating Chad and looks forward to voting for him in the Senate,\u201d his office said in response to a question about whether he would return his \u201cblue slip\u201d<\/a> \u2014 that is, give the assent that has traditionally been required from home-state senators for trial-judge nominees.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a U-turn from 2022 when then-President Joe Biden intended to nominate Meredith for a federal judgeship but pulled the plan after Paul indicated that he wouldn\u2019t give his support.<\/p>\n

Had Paul had continued to oppose Meredith\u2019s nomination, it would have been the latest breach with his party and the White House \u2014 he\u2019s currently deeply at odds over the GOP megabill<\/a>. But Paul\u2019s position in 2022 wasn\u2019t, he emphasized at the time, based on opposition to Meredith but on his belief that McConnell, who was then the minority leader, had effectively cut him out of the nominating process.<\/p>\n

Paul said at the time<\/a> he learned of Meredith\u2019s nomination through an FBI background check and that \u201cMcConnell\u2019s to blame for tanking this because he tried to do it secretly.\u201d McConnell told The New York Times<\/a> that Paul\u2019s position was \u201cutterly pointless.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GOP Sen. Rand Paul is throwing his support behind a home-state judicial pick that he stalled three years ago as part of a feud with his fellow Kentuckian Mitch McConnell. Trump said this week he will nominate Chad Meredith to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}