President Trump is rightly angry that some of his top choices for U.S. attorneys in Democratic-controlled states are being blocked by Democrats and their left-wing allies in the judiciary. But recent attacks by some of the president’s supporters on Sen. Chuck Grassley, Trump’s most effective ally in the Senate, are misplaced.
First of all, remember who Grassley is. He is a worthy statesman, but also a smart legislator, a fearless investigator and a workhorse in the Senate. He does not take center stage, but quietly puts one victory after another on the scoreboard for Trump and his MAGA agenda.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) participates in a hearing on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally convened by the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security Committee, Washington, DC, July 30, 2024. (ALLISON BAILEY/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
This is not a blunder. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, and two were carried squarely on the shoulders of Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He stopped former President Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court seat with Merrick Garland, Joe Biden’s future anti-Trump lawyer-supporting AG, allowing Trump to install Judge Neil Gorsuch instead. And when Democrats tried to ruin Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s life and derail his nomination, it was Grassley’s steady hand that guided Kavanaugh through the partisan spectacle, squashed the lies and got him confirmed.
Grassley has done more than anyone in Congress to expose partisan politics against Trump. It is thanks to Grassley that we know of the existence of Arctic Frost: Jack Smith and the Biden FBI’s insane campaign to put Trump behind bars and make every Republican who so much as drew a breath the subject of criminal investigation. Whistleblowers at the FBI knew they could only trust one man to uncover these damning details: Chuck Grassley. Now we know that Biden’s Justice Department and complicit judges have been spying on Republican members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate and mining records of hundreds of other MAGA patriots, many of whom are today part of the Trump administration, such as Dan Scavino, Peter Navarro, and Harmeet Dhillon (whom Grassley confirmed as chairman of the Judiciary Committee).
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In fact, Grassley is literally breaking his own records when it comes to Senate confirmations. He is treating and confirming judges at a faster pace than during Trump’s first administration, when Grassley was also chairman of the judiciary. He withstood the vicious attack to confirm Judge Emil Bove, handing the Third Circuit to the majority of Republican appointments. He blasted the opposition and confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and other Justice Department leaders. He is also processing U.S. attorneys through his committee more quickly than Democrats did during the Biden administration. And he does all this while leading the charge against judicial activism and unconstitutional one-size-fits-all orders. And the billions of dollars the government received in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill to secure our border and lock up dangerous criminals? Those border security provisions were written by none other than – you guessed it – Chuck Grassley.
Lindsey Halligan (left) and Alina Habba (right) have been blocked by Democrats using the blue slip tradition. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
We are on track to see the same number of attorney confirmations by the end of the year as we saw in Biden’s first year. But a few of his top picks — friends of mine and fellow contenders like Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan — have been blocked by Democrats using an age-old blue slip rule.
Sideline commentators and keyboard warriors seem to think Grassley can simply bang his chairman’s gavel and make the blue slip disappear. But has Grassley, the man who did so much for Trump, really abandoned these nominees? The answer for those who actually want to do their homework is no.
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The blue slip should go away, but Grassley can’t make it happen alone. He needs votes to advance nominees, and he doesn’t have them without blue slips. Months ago, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C unambiguous on the Senate floor that he would not confirm nominees without one. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., echoed this. This ends the conversation. Without the vote of either of these two Judiciary Committee members, the nominees fail regardless of Grassley’s actions.
And Tillis and Kennedy are certainly not the only ones. Senators, both Republicans and Democrats, will not easily give up this power. All 100 senators prefer to have a say in who can become a judge or prosecutor in their state, rather than letting the president decide who can serve in other states. That’s why Democrat Dick Durbin couldn’t eliminate the blue slip when he chaired the Judiciary Committee during the Biden administration, even though progressive activists and them media allies begged him to do it.
Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, September 20. (AP/Jose Luis Magana)
Senators won’t abolish the blue slip either, because they know they benefit from being in the minority. Republicans used the blue slip to stop Biden from appointing nearly thirty district judges, and so far Trump has nominated fifteen boldly constitutionalist judges to fill the seats Republicans kept open.
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I don’t like blue panties, but I live in the real world. I can count votes, and I know blue slips aren’t going away. As chief appointments attorney for the Senate Appointments Committee, working for Grassley during Trump’s first term, I helped end blue slips for circuit judges, because their jurisdictions span multiple states and therefore their fate obviously should not be determined by the senators of a single state. That was a great achievement, but the limit of what was possible for the time being.
Democrats will do anything to avoid responsibility, and Trump should not allow that. His government must use every tactic to overcome obstruction and prosecute perpetrators of legal practices. He is right to want to put an end to the blue slip. But the Senate simply does not want to bring this to Congress, because there are no votes, and the president’s public outcry has unfortunately not yet made the difference.
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As I have said before, to eliminate the blue slip, the administration must build support: secure the commitments of at least fifty Republican Senators, including every Republican judiciary in the Senate, to vote for nominees without blue slips. Grassley wants Trump’s nominees to succeed, and knows there are currently no votes for nominees who don’t have blue slips. Trump must rely on the judgment of his most effective ally in the Senate. Grassley is a workhorse, not a show horse. And Grassley has done more for Trump than any other senator.
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