PART 2:
Joan Larsen, a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking at his memorial service in Washington last year. She was confirmed this month to be a judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Pool photo by Susan Walsh
The bar group later deemed two of them unqualified to be trial judges, saying they lacked sufficient trial experience. On Thursday, the Judiciary Committee nevertheless advanced both to the Senate floor. One, Holly Teeter, a 38-year-old federal prosecutor who fell just shy of the bar group’s minimum standard of 12 years of experience, gained bipartisan approval. But the other, Brett Talley, a 36-year-old with virtually no trial experience and who wrote politically charged blog posts on topics like gun rights, had a party-line vote.
Republicans may go further in ousting the group from its semiofficial gatekeeping role after it rated L. Steven Grasz, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the appeals court in St. Louis, as “not qualified” to be a judge, portraying him as “gratuitously rude” and unlikely “to separate his role as an advocate from that of a judge” on matters like abortion. The White House is weighing telling future nominees not to sign confidentiality waivers that give A.B.A. evaluators access to disciplinary action records and not to interview with the bar group, an official said.
Conservatives are also pressuring Mr. Grassley to reduce one of the few remaining constraints on letting a president with an allied Senate majority appoint whomever he wants to a life-tenured judgeship: the Judiciary Committee’s “blue slip” practice, named for the color of the paper that senators use to sign off on nominees for judgeships in their states.
While it has been handled differently in different eras, throughout the Obama years, Mr. Grassley and his Democratic predecessor, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, refused to let the confirmation process proceed for nominees without two positive blue slips. That approach forces presidents to consult with senators and, when they are from opposite parties, incentivizes the compromise selection of relative moderates.
Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, has announced he will not return a blue slip for David R. Stras, an appeals court nominee who is a Minnesota Supreme Court justice and is on Mr. Trump’s short list for the United States Supreme Court, saying he was not meaningfully consulted and objected to him. (An administration official said the White House had primarily negotiated with Minnesota’s senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who did turn in a blue slip.) Conservatives want Mr. Grassley to hold a hearing anyway.
Democratic senators in Oregon and Wisconsin have also not turned in blue slips for pending appellate nominees, but the question of how much control senators will retain over judicial appointments in their states is not limited to partisan politics.
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, has not returned a blue slip for Kyle Duncan, an appeals court nominee who represented conservative clients in several culture-war cases, including whether corporations may refuse to provide contraception coverage to employees based on owners’ religious beliefs, and whether transgender students may be barred from using the school bathrooms of their gender identities.
The Judicial Crisis Network, an opaquely funded group that runs ads pressuring Democratic senators not to block Trump nominees, has begun airing ads in Louisiana supporting Mr. Duncan. Mr. Franken warned that if the blue-slip constraint eroded, Republican senators would lose, too — and not just when Democrats regained power.
But many conservatives want to take full advantage of their window of opportunity. Mr. Leo, of the Federalist Society, said Mr. Trump had instructed his transition team to prioritize appointing conservative judges who would be “strong” and could resist “tremendous political and social pressure.”
Mr. Trump “understood that the American people cared about judges, and he for his own purposes cared very deeply about it and recognized that he could be a president who could help restore the judiciary to its proper role,” he said.
Correction: November 11, 2017
An earlier version of this article misstated the number the number of men who were among President Trump’s appeals court nominees. Fourteen, not 15, of his 18 nominees have been men.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy! @Cali_livin
Joan Larsen, a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking at his memorial service in Washington last year. She was confirmed this month to be a judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Pool photo by Susan Walsh
The bar group later deemed two of them unqualified to be trial judges, saying they lacked sufficient trial experience. On Thursday, the Judiciary Committee nevertheless advanced both to the Senate floor. One, Holly Teeter, a 38-year-old federal prosecutor who fell just shy of the bar group’s minimum standard of 12 years of experience, gained bipartisan approval. But the other, Brett Talley, a 36-year-old with virtually no trial experience and who wrote politically charged blog posts on topics like gun rights, had a party-line vote.
Republicans may go further in ousting the group from its semiofficial gatekeeping role after it rated L. Steven Grasz, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the appeals court in St. Louis, as “not qualified” to be a judge, portraying him as “gratuitously rude” and unlikely “to separate his role as an advocate from that of a judge” on matters like abortion. The White House is weighing telling future nominees not to sign confidentiality waivers that give A.B.A. evaluators access to disciplinary action records and not to interview with the bar group, an official said.
Conservatives are also pressuring Mr. Grassley to reduce one of the few remaining constraints on letting a president with an allied Senate majority appoint whomever he wants to a life-tenured judgeship: the Judiciary Committee’s “blue slip” practice, named for the color of the paper that senators use to sign off on nominees for judgeships in their states.
While it has been handled differently in different eras, throughout the Obama years, Mr. Grassley and his Democratic predecessor, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, refused to let the confirmation process proceed for nominees without two positive blue slips. That approach forces presidents to consult with senators and, when they are from opposite parties, incentivizes the compromise selection of relative moderates.
Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, has announced he will not return a blue slip for David R. Stras, an appeals court nominee who is a Minnesota Supreme Court justice and is on Mr. Trump’s short list for the United States Supreme Court, saying he was not meaningfully consulted and objected to him. (An administration official said the White House had primarily negotiated with Minnesota’s senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who did turn in a blue slip.) Conservatives want Mr. Grassley to hold a hearing anyway.
Democratic senators in Oregon and Wisconsin have also not turned in blue slips for pending appellate nominees, but the question of how much control senators will retain over judicial appointments in their states is not limited to partisan politics.
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, has not returned a blue slip for Kyle Duncan, an appeals court nominee who represented conservative clients in several culture-war cases, including whether corporations may refuse to provide contraception coverage to employees based on owners’ religious beliefs, and whether transgender students may be barred from using the school bathrooms of their gender identities.
The Judicial Crisis Network, an opaquely funded group that runs ads pressuring Democratic senators not to block Trump nominees, has begun airing ads in Louisiana supporting Mr. Duncan. Mr. Franken warned that if the blue-slip constraint eroded, Republican senators would lose, too — and not just when Democrats regained power.
But many conservatives want to take full advantage of their window of opportunity. Mr. Leo, of the Federalist Society, said Mr. Trump had instructed his transition team to prioritize appointing conservative judges who would be “strong” and could resist “tremendous political and social pressure.”
Mr. Trump “understood that the American people cared about judges, and he for his own purposes cared very deeply about it and recognized that he could be a president who could help restore the judiciary to its proper role,” he said.
Correction: November 11, 2017
An earlier version of this article misstated the number the number of men who were among President Trump’s appeals court nominees. Fourteen, not 15, of his 18 nominees have been men.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r. @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy! @Cali_livin
