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\n

Donald Trump has long fumed<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Utah Sen. Mike Lee<\/a> 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 \u201cblue slip,\u201d which lets senators block any home-state district court judge, federal marshal or U.S. attorney nomination they oppose.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Lee said in an interview that he didn’t expect to eliminate blue slips \u2014 actual pieces of paper senators sign to indicate their support for a nominee \u2014 but he left the door open to changing how the tradition is enforced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no appetite to just get rid of them,\u201d Lee said before adding, \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee said it was \u201cpremature\u201d to discuss in detail how he would approach the matter and noted it had undergone \u201citerative changes\u201d as previous Judiciary chairs had \u201cconsidered and in many many cases implemented [alterations] just in order to deal with things as they happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has a simpler view of the matter \u2014 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<\/a> (R-Iowa) has repeatedly fended off Trump\u2019s calls to end the practice, explaining that most of his fellow senators<\/a> have no interest in giving up leverage in who gets home-state appointments.<\/p>\n

Asked how the White House would want Lee to handle blue slips, a spokesperson pointed back to several of the president\u2019s comments over the past year, including an October 2025 Truth Social post where he called it an \u201cold and ridiculous custom.\u201d Trump targeted Grassley directly last December, saying that it was \u201cshocking\u201d that he would allow \u201cthis scam to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, Trump lamented<\/a> the \u201cridiculous views of Republicans on blue slipping\u201d when he temporarily backed off Jay Clayton\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, you know, he\u2019s a traditionalist, and I think he\u2019ll honor the blue slip,\u201d said Sen. John Cornyn<\/a> (R-Texas), a longtime Judiciary Committee member who is leaving the Senate at the start of next year.<\/p>\n

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\u2019d risk angering some fellow Republicans who want to keep control of nominations<\/a> in their back yards \u2014 including under future Democratic administrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cSenators have few prerogatives and tools, and that\u2019s one of them,\u201d Cornyn said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Grassley nodded to that reality amid Trump\u2019s pressure last year, posting on X that \u201ca U.S. Atty\/district judge nominee without a blue slip does not [have] the votes to get confirmed on the Senate floor & they don\u2019t [have] the votes to get out of [committee].\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\u201cI know who is qualified in my state to be a federal judge a lot better than somebody in Washington, D.C., does,\u201d Kennedy said, predicting that Republicans would be able to \u201coutvote\u201d Lee were he to move to eliminate them.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 and nearly every Republican in the chamber \u2014 to back him up.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s emerging role will also require him to win over many of the same colleagues he has alienated over the past year<\/a> with his advocacy for a partisan elections bill that has no clear path to passage.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> said late last year that there are \u201cway more Republican senators who are interested in preserving\u201d the blue slip \u201cthat those who aren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to assume everybody supports the blue slip,\u201d Grassley said in an interview Tuesday, voicing his support for keeping it as-is.<\/p>\n

\u201cA 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That said, Lee is correct that the blue-slip precedent has already been eroded: Republicans effectively ended the practice for circuit judges during Trump\u2019s first term, arguing at the time that courts of appeals cover broad regions and thus shouldn\u2019t be subject to veto by a single state\u2019s senator.<\/p>\n

Lee said amid that debate in a 2018 Judiciary Committee hearing<\/a> that the blue slip \u201cis not, and never has been, codified as a rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIts use as a de facto veto has definitely been the exception rather than the rule,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

During his second term, Trump has erupted over instances where Democrats have used the blue slip to block \u2014 or at least complicate \u2014 the confirmations of his favored nominees.<\/p>\n

Schumer and fellow New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand<\/a> refused to greenlight Clayton\u2019s U.S. attorney nomination; he was later appointed to the job by Manhattan\u2019s federal judges.<\/p>\n

But New Jersey Sens. Cory Booker<\/a> and Andy Kim<\/a> successfully blocked the nomination of Alina Habba to become their state\u2019s permanent U.S. attorney last year, and Trump\u2019s pick for U.S. attorney in Southern California, Bill Essayli, was also sidelined due to Democratic opposition.<\/p>\n

Sen. Dick Durbin<\/a> of Illinois, the top Judiciary Democrat and a prior chair of the committee, said that he was largely in the dark about Lee\u2019s views on the blue slip but urged the Utah Republican to \u201cthink twice\u201d before undoing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stuck with it through thick and thin,\u201d Durbin said. \u201cA lot of people who criticized me as chairman for observing it thanked me after we lost the majority. \u2026 So I hope he sticks with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/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-27248","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\/27248","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=27248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}