Senate Republicans are holding firm against President Donald Trump’s pressure to scrap a longtime tradition in Congress’ upper chamber, issuing a substantive rebuke to his desires and openly disagreeing with him on the issue.
Trump has repeatedly called on the Senate GOP to eliminate its blue slip practice, which allows senators from the minority party to block judicial appointments such as lower court nominees and U.S. attorneys who hail from their states. The president has argued that Democratic senators are obstructing his nominees, but Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is staunch in his resolve not to take away the century-old tradition.
“After a hundred years, why would you do away with it?” he told The Dispatch. “It’s supported by a hundred members of the United States Senate.”
Senate Republicans’ defiance of Trump here is perhaps the most substantive stand they have taken since they stonewalled the nomination of former Rep. Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general after last year’s election. To this point, members of the congressional GOP have often raised concerns or pushed for more information about Trump’s actions, but rarely have they obstructed his agenda. This time, however, they are refusing to sacrifice one of the Senate’s time-honored traditions, one that guards Congress’ power in an age where the legislative branch is often happy to cede authority to the executive.
Since at least 1917, the Judiciary Committee has used the blue slip practice to give senators influence over federal judicial appointees in their states. The chairman will give a blue sheet of paper to a state’s two senators and ask them if they approve of the nominee. If they return the blue slip with an endorsement, the nomination proceeds. If they give a negative assessment or do not return the blue slip, the nomination stalls.
“What it means is that home state senators have an effective veto on these categories of nominations, and as a result, presidents are very deferential to senators’ opinions for those nominations,” Gregg Nunziata, executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law who once served as the chief nominations counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, told The Dispatch. “The White House comes to the senators before making a nomination and invites suggestions.”
Trump has said that eight of the people he has nominated to be U.S. attorneys have been blocked using the blue slip. The highest-profile of those nominees was Alina Habba, his former personal lawyer whom he appointed to an interim stint as a U.S. attorney in New Jersey earlier this year before nominating her for the permanent position, only to have the state’s two Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, oppose her nomination.
Such difficulties have made Trump especially hostile to the Senate custom. In July, he called on Grassley by name to ignore the blue slips in a Truth Social post. He did so again in August while indicating he was going to file a lawsuit to get the practice abolished, though that never happened. Most recently, when he hosted Republican senators for lunch at the White House on Tuesday, he said the practice was unconstitutional and once again asked his guests to revisit it.
Despite the pressure, Grassley is not budging, and his fellow Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are behind him. “It’s no secret that senators have a lot to say about who the president nominates to these jobs, especially on the District Court,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said at a Wednesday Judiciary Committee hearing. “And I for one want to keep it that way, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for your courage, with respect to Democrat and Republican presidents, for standing your ground on the blue slip, which I support unconditionally.”
Even GOP senators who are generally quite deferential to Trump are open about their disagreement with him on this issue. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recalled his experience as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee when Democrats held the Senate before 2025. “I’ve been consistent,” Graham told The Dispatch. “When I was ranking member, and they were in charge, we all fought to keep the blue slip. Nobody asked me to change the blue slip then. So I have a very long view of how the process works. It’s not a power. It may be abused. Each party thinks the other party abuses it, but I think it’s stood the test of time.”
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who is trying to fend off a primary challenge from his state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, also spoke of his support for the blue slip. “I’m a fan of senators being able to block bad nominees from their home state, and sometimes that helps people like me, and sometimes it is not useful to the administration, but it’s sort of the normal friction I think you have between executive and legislative branch,” he told The Dispatch.
One reason Republicans are protective of the blue slip is that they effectively used it to deny nominees to whom they objected during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and taking it away would allow a future Democrat to fill vacancies without their consultation. Most notably, Obama tried to appoint former Indiana Supreme Court Justice Myra Selby to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016, but then-Indiana Sen. Dan Coats did not return his blue slip, so the nomination failed. When Trump took office, he appointed Amy Coney Barrett, a law professor at the time, to fill the vacancy, sending her to the Supreme Court years later. Once Trump left office, Senate Republicans used the procedure to stop Biden from appointing people to positions in their states.
“There are four district court judges now waiting to be confirmed that are there because I withheld the blue slip during the Biden administration,” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who has said he will not vote for nominees who are missing their blue slips, told The Dispatch.
Other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee spoke about how the blue slip has helped them during Democratic administrations. Graham said there were “endless examples of how the blue slip was used to get a more acceptable” nominee.
“It helped me in my negotiations, big time,” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told The Dispatch. “We had four judicial vacancies in Missouri towards the end of the last president’s term, and I’m sure he would have imposed his nominees on me without any consultation if he could, but he couldn’t.” Hawley added that he was sympathetic to Trump’s frustrations over Democrats’ blocking his nominees. “I wish I had a good solution,” he said. “I don’t know if changing the blue slip would necessarily get him the outcome that he wants there in the committee.”
And it is unlikely that Trump will persuade Republicans to get rid of the blue slip. “The chairman of the Judiciary Committee has been consistent, as have other members of the Senate, that we’re going to continue with it,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, told The Dispatch.
