President Trump has criticized Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for his defense of the “blue slip” practice, which allows home-state senators to veto nominees to district courts and U.S. attorneys’ offices. Trump claims that this right has been taken away from him in states with just one Democrat United States Senator, due to an outdated “blue slip” custom that Grassley refuses to overturn. Trump urges Grassley to allow strong Republican candidates to ascend to these powerful roles and tell Democrats to go to hell.
Trump was forced to withdraw the nomination of his former defense attorney, Alina Habba, to serve as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey after the state’s Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, opposed her nomination. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s chairs typically do not proceed on federal district-level judicial and prosecutorial nominees unless both senators representing the state return blue-slip documents signing off on the nominees. A federal judge ruled that Habba has been unlawfully serving as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor since July 24, when her 120-day period expired for her to serve as U.S. attorney in an interim capacity.
In response, Habba took aim at Grassley, Booker, and Kim for abiding by the “blue slip” tradition. She claimed that Grassley, along with Booker and Kim, had done them a disservice by holding up a traditional blue slip and not allowing many of the president’s picks to go through and be voted on by Senate.
Grassley, who has been in office since 1981, has moved several of Trump’s U.S. attorney nominees in Democratic-led states, stating that when a nominee comes out of committee, all 100 senators have a say on the nomination and part of their consideration is based on the home state senators’ input.
