Feinstein absence: Senate Judiciary panel adjourns without vote on key judicial nominees
Kaelan Deese
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The Senate Judiciary Committee managed to clear one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees on Thursday while tabling five others in part due to the absence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
The committee met to vote on Amanda Brailsford, who has been nominated to the U.S. Court for the District of Idaho. Chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL) commended Sens. Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Jim Risch (R-ID) for helping fill the vacancy.
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Durbin has called for more GOP members to assist Democrats in confirming judicial appointments. Democrats need bipartisan support to advance nominees for votes due to the absence of Feinstein, who has been away from Washington since February while she recovers from shingles.
The request Durbin made relates to the “blue slip” tradition, which lets home state senators from the opposing party of the president weigh in on whether to approve the White House’s selection to fill a court nomination.
“As I’ve mentioned before, during the Trump administration, Democratic senators signed 110 blue slips,” Durbin said. “So far, there have been 17 blue slips signed by Republicans during the Biden administration. I plead with my colleagues to make a good faith effort to sit down and see if they can reach an agreement with the White House on nominees.”
Despite Feinstein’s absence, Biden has seen some of his selections advance out of the committee through bipartisan votes. Last week, the committee advanced nine nominees, seven of which would be judges, along with one United States attorney and a U.S. marshal.
Judicial nominees on the agenda who were not voted on include Michael Arthur Delaney, nominated to be U.S. Circuit judge for the First Circuit; Charnelle Bjelkengren, nominated to be U.S. District judge for the Eastern District of Washington; S. Kato Crews, nominated to be U.S. District judge for the District of Colorado; Marian F. Gaston, nominated to be U.S. District judge for the Southern District of California; and Molly R. Silfen, nominated to be a judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Several Democrats, including Feinstein, are undecided on Delaney, marking a rare scenario in which Democrats are not in agreement with the president’s pick.
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Delaney, formerly deputy attorney general of New Hampshire, has been criticized by Democratic senators concerned about his handling of a 2015 case in which Delaney requested that an underage sexual assault victim’s identity be revealed if the suit went to trial.
Meanwhile, selections such as Bjelkengren’s could be hard to move forward without Feinstein after she made headlines when Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) stumped her on basic constitutional questions, making her ripe for criticism by GOP members.