Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday rejected President Donald Trump’s call to disregard a Senate tradition to expedite the confirmations of his US attorney and federal judge nominees.
The Republican leader told reporters on Capitol Hill that he doesn’t believe “there’s any strong interest” in doing away with the “blue slip” precedent, which takes into account the views of a nominee’s home state senators before moving forward in the confirmation process.
“I’m happy to hear what Senator [Chuck] Grassley and my colleagues say, but no, I don’t think there’s any strong interest in changing that up here,” the South Dakota Republican said.
The comments come after Trump urged Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Tuesday to “step up” and break with the tradition to speed up stalled nominees.
But while Trump argued on Truth Social that “Democrats have broken this ridiculous custom on us, it’s time that we break it on them,” Thune said Wednesday that both parties have used blue slips to block nominees from consideration.
“I think the blue slip process is something that’s been used for a long time by both sides, and neither side has violated its usage in the past,” he told reporters.
“We’ll see where the conversation goes with our colleagues, but I don’t sense any rush to change it,” he added. “I think the key is to make sure that we’re making good headway doing the list of judges that are on the President’s list, and at some point, we may need to look at doing things differently on nominees generally, if the Democrats continue this path of obstruction that they’re on right now.”
Grassley said at the start of the morning’s Judiciary Committee meeting Wednesday that he had been “surprised to see President Trump on Truth Social go after me and Senate Republicans over what we call the ‘blue slip.’”
“Now, to people in the Real America – not here in Washington, DC, an island surrounded by reality – the people in Real America don’t care about what the ‘blue slip’ is, but, in fact, it impacts the district judges who serve their communities and the US attorneys who ensure law and order is enforced,” he said. “Both parties have successfully used the rule to block presidential nominees in the past, and it has generally been respected.”
“I was offended by what the president said, and I’m disappointed that it would result in personal insults,” Grassley concluded.
A number of Senate Republicans backed the Iowa Republican and precedent.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso told CNN “I support the chairman,” while Sen. John Kennedy asked Trump to “back off this” issue and called it a “needless fight.”
“Particularly for district judges, senators are much better able to be able to pick a lawyer from their community,” Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, said. “That satisfies what I call community standards.“
“What I try to do is pick men and women so that others in the community will look at and go, you know, I maybe don’t agree with everything they’ve ever said or done, but man, those are damn good lawyers, and they’ll be fair and they’ll listen to both sides,” he continued. “That’s the goal.”
Similarly, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis opposed any change, saying of Trump: “Whoever advised him on that policy has no brain on this subject.”
“If you send forth a nom in a state where you’re really not even conferring with the two Democrat members, then you’re just setting that up for the political physics that I talk about of payback,” he said. “And why would we do that?”
Sen. John Cornyn, who is facing a tough reelection battle in Texas, said he would support Grassley’s and Thune’s choice.
When pressed on whether he thinks it’s the correct move, Cornyn repeated that he will “support their decision.”
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