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Trump picks a losing fight with longest-serving GOP senator
The senatorial courtesy prevents partisans such as Alina Habba from becoming U.S. attorneys.
4 min
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) visits the pork tent at his state's fair in Des Moines on Aug. 8. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Chuck Grassley was first elected to Congress in 1974 and won his Senate seat in 1980. Over half a century on Capitol Hill, the Iowa Republican has been in the minority party about a year longer than in the majority. Grassley’s experience in and out of power underscores why he is leading the Senate GOP’s resistance to escalating pressure from President Donald Trump to abandon an important tradition called the blue slip.
The senatorial courtesy gives deference to home-state senators on a president’s picks for U.S. attorney and district courts. If both senators from a state oppose a nominee, they refuse to return a colored form — literally a blue slip — and that person does not get a vote. For more than a century, this has been central to how the Senate performs its constitutional duty to advise and consent on nominees. It has incentivized presidents in both parties to solicit input from the opposition and elevated mainstream picks over extremists.
Now, Trump wants the Senate to abandon this practice because the two Democrats from New Jersey, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, blocked the confirmation of his former personal lawyer Alina Habba to be U.S. attorney for that state. Trump has tried various maneuvers and pushed the limits of vacancies laws to keep her in the position anyway, but last week U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann of New Jersey ruled that Habba is “not lawfully holding the office” and has lacked legal authority since July 1. The judge ordered that “she must be disqualified from participating in any ongoing cases” but paused his decision so the Justice Department can appeal.
That prompted days of rage directed by Trump toward Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. Trump posted on social mediaSunday that Grassley should “tell the Democrats, as they often tell us, to go to HELL!” On Monday, the president threatened to file a lawsuit, which would be entirely frivolous. “This is based on an old custom,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “It’s not based on a law, and I think it’s unconstitutional, and I’ll probably be filing a suit on that soon.”
Follow Trump’s second term
The Constitution explicitly allows the Senate to “determine the Rules of its Proceedings,” and Grassley pushed back hard on Trump’s other claims. He explained that having the blue slip in place during President Joe Biden’s administration allowed Senate Republicans to keep 30 liberals off the bench in red states, leaving vacancies that Trump can now fill with conservatives. Grassley added that Trump withdrew Habba’s nomination on July 24 because she lacked support, and the Judiciary Committee never received any of the necessary paperwork to vet her nomination.
A president should be able to stock his administration with his preferred team, and the bar ought to be high for opposing executive branch nominees. Habba, however, epitomizes the kind of U.S. attorney nominee that blue slips exist to stop. She’s too overtly partisan to hold what is supposed to be an independent law enforcement role.
Shortly afterher appointment as an interim U.S. attorney, Habba told a right-wing outlet that she wants to help “turn New Jersey red.” She then announced investigations into the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general. She also filed charges against the Democratic mayor of Newark and a congresswoman who participated in a protest at a detention facility that resulted in a scuffle with immigration agents.
Habba has continued to show she lacks the temperament to be New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor. Appearing Sunday on Fox News, for example, she attacked Grassley and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) for being part of the problem.“I had the right as the nominee to get in front of the Senate and to be voted on,” Habba said. (She should ask Merrick Garland about that.)
Tillis, who is retiring next year, recently promised to honor blue slips even if Senate Republicans decide to do away with them. He says he will vote against any nominee for U.S. attorney or a district court judgeship if neither senator from their state offers support. Grassley, who has served longer than all but five others in Senate history, and Tillis are thinking about what is best for the future of the country. Trump is thinking about what is best for him today.
In that way, they are performing a role akin to what former senators Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) and Joe Manchin III (I-West Virginia) did in 2022 when they prevented shortsighted Democrats from ending the filibuster during Biden’s presidency. Short-term gambits tend to backfire over the long term.
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