President Trump is rightfully angry that some of his top choices for U.S. attorneys in Democrat-controlled states are being blocked by Democrats and their leftist allies in the judicial branch. But the recent attacks from some supporters of the president against Sen. Chuck Grassley, Trump\u2019s most effective ally in the Senate, are misplaced.<\/p>\n
To start, remember who Grassley is. He\u2019s a dignified statesman but also a shrewd legislator, fearless investigator and Senate workhorse. He doesn\u2019t chase the limelight but quietly puts one win after the other on the scoreboard for Trump and his MAGA agenda.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t bluster. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, and two were carried squarely on the shoulders of Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. He stopped former President Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court seat with Merrick Garland, Joe Biden\u2019s anti-Trump lawfare-supporting AG, enabling Trump to install Justice Neil Gorsuch instead. And when Democrats tried to ruin Justice Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s life and derail his nomination, it was Grassley\u2019s steady hand that guided Kavanaugh through the partisan spectacle, shut down the lies and got him confirmed.<\/p>\n
Grassley\u2019s done more than anybody in Congress to expose partisan lawfare against Trump. It\u2019s thanks to Grassley that we know of the existence of Arctic Frost, Jack Smith and the Biden FBI\u2019s demented campaign to put Trump behind bars and make any Republican that so much as breathed a subject of a criminal investigation. <\/p>\n
Whistleblowers at the FBI knew they could only trust one man to bring these damning details to light: Chuck Grassley. Now we know the Biden Justice Department and complicit judges spied on Republican members of both the House and the Senate and sought records for hundreds of other MAGA patriots, many of whom are a part of Trump\u2019s administration today, like Dan Scavino, Peter Navarro and Harmeet Dhillon, who Grassley led to confirmation as Judiciary Committee chairman.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In fact, Grassley is literally breaking his own records when it comes to Senate confirmations. He\u2019s processing and confirming judges at a rate faster than in Trump\u2019s first administration, when Grassley was also Judiciary chairman. He navigated the vicious onslaught to confirm Judge Emil Bove, flipping the 3rd Circuit to majority Republican appointees. He bulldozed opposition and confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and other Justice Department leaders. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s also processing U.S. attorneys through his committee faster than Democrats did during the Biden administration. And he\u2019s doing it all while leading the charge against judicial activism and unconstitutional universal injunctions. And the billions of dollars the administration received in Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill to secure our border and lock up dangerous criminals? Those border security provisions were written by none other than \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 Chuck Grassley.<\/p>\n
We’re on pace to see the same number of attorney confirmations by year\u2019s end as in Biden\u2019s first year. But a few of his top choices \u2014 friends of mine and fellow warriors like Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan\u2014 have been stopped by Democrats using a century-old ‘blue slip’ rule.<\/p>\n
Sideline commentators and keyboard warriors seem to think Grassley could just bang his chairman\u2019s gavel and make the blue slip go away. But is Grassley, the man who\u2019s done so much for Trump, really sandbagging these nominees? The answer, for those who care to actually do their homework, is no.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The blue slip should go, but Grassley can\u2019t just make it happen alone. He needs votes to advance nominees, and he doesn\u2019t have them without blue slips. Months ago, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., stated unequivocally on the Senate floor he wouldn\u2019t confirm nominees without one. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., echoed this. That ends the conversation. Without the vote of either of these two members of the Judiciary Committee, nominees fail, regardless of Grassley\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
And Tillis and Kennedy are hardly alone. Senators, both Republican and Democrat, won\u2019t soon give up this power. All 100 senators prioritize having a say in who gets to be a judge or prosecutor in their state over letting the president decide who serves in other states. That\u2019s why Democrat Dick Durbin couldn\u2019t get rid of the blue slip when he chaired the Judiciary Committee during the Biden administration, even though progressive activists and their media allies begged him to do it.<\/p>\n
Senators also won\u2019t get rid of the blue slip because they know it benefits them when they\u2019re in the minority. Republicans used the blue slip to block Biden from appointing nearly 30 district judges, and, so far, Trump has nominated 15 bold constitutionalist judges to fill the seats that Republicans held open.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t like blue slips, but I live in the real world. I can count votes, and I know blue slips aren\u2019t going away. As the Senate Judiciary Committee\u2019s chief counsel for nominations, working for Grassley in Trump\u2019s first term, I helped end blue slips for circuit judges because their jurisdictions cover multiple states and therefore their fates obviously shouldn\u2019t be determined by a single state\u2019s senators. That was a major achievement, but the limit of what was possible for now.<\/p>\n
Democrats will stop at nothing to evade accountability, and Trump shouldn\u2019t let them. His administration should use every tactic to overcome obstruction and pursue lawfare perpetrators. He\u2019s right to want the blue slip\u2019s end. But the Senate simply won\u2019t deliver it this Congress as the votes don\u2019t exist, and the president\u2019s public outrage unfortunately hasn\u2019t moved the needle yet.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve said before, to abolish the blue slip, the administration must build support by securing commitments from at least 50 Republican senators, including every Senate Judiciary Republican, to vote for nominees without blue slips. Grassley wants Trump\u2019s nominees to succeed and knows the votes currently aren\u2019t there for nominees who don\u2019t have blue slips. Trump should trust his most effective Senate ally\u2019s judgment. Grassley is a workhorse, not a showhorse. And Grassley has delivered more for Trump than any other senator.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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President Trump is rightfully angry that some of his top choices for U.S. attorneys in Democrat-controlled states are being blocked by Democrats and their leftist allies in the judicial branch. But the recent attacks from some supporters of the president against Sen. Chuck Grassley, Trump\u2019s most effective ally in the Senate, are misplaced. To start,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}