Trump wants the Senate to scrap the 'blue slip.' Republicans aren't interested. [View all]

Source: Politico

08/19/2025 04:45 AM EDT


President Donald Trump last month tried to goad Sen. Chuck Grassley into ending the practice of giving deference to home-state senators in the judicial nominations process — a pressure campaign that quickly escalated into an all-out social media war on the 91-year-old Judiciary Committee chair. “Senator Grassley must step up,” Trump said on Truth Social, noting that he got the Iowa Republican “re-elected to the U.S. Senate when he was down, by a lot.”

It didn’t work. Despite Trump’s threats to rally his base against Grassley, Senate Republicans rebuffed the attempts to get their colleague to give up on so-called blue slips, which allow members of the minority party power to effectively veto nominees for U.S. attorneys and district court judges who would serve their regions.

It also doesn’t look like their position will change heading into the fall, either, as Republicans have indicated they’ll seek a rules change to speed up the confirmation process for certain Trump nominees on the Senate floor but not at the committee level. “As a practical matter, the Senate’s not going to give up the blue slip,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, in an interview. “So my appeal to the president is: please reconsider. Why do we want to have this fight for nothing?”

It marks a rare instance where Hill Republicans have publicly broken with the president, underscoring how even Trump’s most loyal allies are willing to stand up to him when it comes to protecting their institution’s traditions — and their own ability to exert influence back home.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/19/senate-republicans-blue-slip-00513489