Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) rebuffed a Thursday plea from President Donald Trump to eliminate blue slips, cautioning that the practice is widely supported by Republicans in the Senate.
“Senators have always had input to that process, and there are many Republican senators, way more Republican senators, who are interested in preserving that than those who aren’t,” Thune told the Washington Examiner.
“So, I think the question is, even if we did it, are there the votes there to do it, and there aren’t.”
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Two hours earlier, Trump posted on Truth Social that Thune ought to intervene, calling it “shocking” that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, would allow Democrats to block his nominees.
“I am hereby asking Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a fantastic guy, to get something done, ideally the termination of Blue Slips. Too many GREAT REPUBLICANS are being, SENT PACKIN’,” Trump said.
Under the blue slip tradition, home state senators can veto a president’s choices for U.S. attorney, and while Democrats have allowed a half-dozen to go through, they have refused to return blue slips for prosecutors in states such as Virginia and New York.
That refusal has fueled open frustration by Trump, in part because his efforts to circumvent Senate confirmation have faced repeated legal setbacks, and on Monday, his interim pick in New Jersey was forced to resign after a court ruled she was serving unlawfully.
The blue slip process also applies to judgeships, though Republicans narrowed the scope to lower court nominees in 2017.
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In one of Thune’s lengthier defenses of the practice, he argued that blue slips benefit Republicans when a Democrat is in the White House, and pointed out that Trump was able to appoint additional judges in Missouri as a result.
“Look, the blue slips, and I’ve conveyed this to anybody who’s asked, including the president, allowed Republicans to prevent a lot of really bad Biden judges from being put into the district courts in their states,” Thune said.
He compared Republican support for the practice to the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold that Trump wants eliminated as well.
Nearly half of all Republicans still support the filibuster, according to a Washington Examiner tally, even though Trump has claimed for years that it gives Democrats too much power in the minority.
In terms of blue slips, Grassley has argued that Republicans on the Judiciary Committee won’t approve a nominee that lacks Democratic support in their home state, making the question of eliminating the practice irrelevant.
Grassley has also had some success in getting blue-state U.S. attorneys confirmed, with three set to be approved in a floor vote next week.