Unsurprisingly, Republicans had no appetite to go along with a move that would help Democrats appoint liberal judges.
Democrats were already incensed after Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith this month blocked a Biden judicial nominee who hailed from her home state of Mississippi.
At issue is the blue slip, a piece of paper handed to a judge’s two home state senators once he or she is nominated to the federal bench. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer celebrated the Senate confirming Biden's 100th judge on Feb. 14, just two years into office. That put Democrats on track to rival the 234 confirmed when Republicans controlled the Senate under former President Donald Trump.First, Feinstein was hospitalized with a severe case of shingles.
She proposed something of an escape hatch earlier this month, asking that Schumer swap her out temporarily on the Judiciary Committee after two House Democrats became the first lawmakers to join the call for her to step down. “Just raising the specter of it might cause the Republicans to think twice,” Brian Fallon, the executive director of judicial activist group Demand Justice, told the New York Times. “Republicans didn’t even contemplate trying to meet the Democrats halfway because they don’t fear any reprisal.”
Should Democrats abandon precedent on blue slips, it would mark the latest step taken to diminish the minority party’s power over the judicial nomination process. Yet casting it aside would nonetheless mark an escalation in Washington’s judicial wars, a move that Sen. John Cornyn , a senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said Democrats would come to regret.
Progressives, who want lawmakers to take a won’t-back-down approach to Washington politics, have for years bristled at Feinstein over her bipartisan streak. Despite being an ardent supporter of gun control and an early voice in favor of gay marriage, Feinstein, like many longtime senators, is an institutionalist at her core and hails from an era when senators were more collegial with one another.
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