“A senator can’t use a blue slip to block a nominee because it’s not the person the senator would’ve picked,” he told his fellow senators. “The president gets to nominate judges. The White House should consult home-state senators, and it’s important that they do so in a meaningful way. But the White House may disagree with senators and may determine that a different individual is more suited to serve on the circuit court. So long as there is consultation, the president generally gets to make that call.”
Grassley also attributed his decision to former Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s earlier move to end the filibuster for lower court judicial nominees and executive branch nominees, which was eventually expanded to Supreme Court nominees in 2017 when Republicans overcame a Democratic filibuster to seat Justice Neil Gorusch. That seat, of course, was only still open because Republicans had refused to hold a vote on then-Judge Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy left by Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016. Every account of the judicial confirmation wars reads like the War of the Roses, with each side claiming that the other side launched the first salvo.
This decision helped the Trump administration stack the federal appellate courts with nominees from the conservative legal movement, tilting the entire federal judiciary further to the right. While Trump’s three Supreme Court justice confirmations will be his most enduring judicial legacy, his efforts to shift the lower courts will be almost as impactful. Because the Supreme Court only hears a few dozen cases each term, the final rulings in thousands of cases each year are made by the federal circuit courts of appeal.
