Senate Republicans have until January 3 before Democrats take over the chamber, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley is spending those weeks treating the committee’s rulebook like a list of suggestions. At Tuesday’s hearing, the committee’s first since the GOP’s midterm drubbing, Grassley ditched a whole stack of committee norms. He signaled nomination hearings this week and next, when the bipartisan practice is to space them at least two weeks apart. He lined up as many as seven nominees for a single hearing. He’s calling nominees before staff have cleared their FBI background checks. And he added two Texas district court nominees whose questionnaires landed 10 and 14 days before their hearing, well short of the committee’s 28-day rule.
Those two Texans tell you everything about the vibe. James Sullivan lost his race for the Texas Supreme Court last Tuesday. The White House sent his paperwork to the committee the next day, and Trump announced the pick with a post noting that “Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn highly recommend him!” Lose an election on Tuesday, get a lifetime appointment by the following Tuesday. The DOJ’s Elliot Gaiser runs the Office of Legal Counsel and got a call from Cruz’s office about the job the day after the midterms. Gaiser signed a memo justifying the administration’s lethal strikes on Caribbean boats, and his only apparent tie to Texas is a Fifth Circuit clerkship.
Dick Durbin, the committee’s top Democrat, said the scramble is about filling Texas district court seats before Senator-elect James Talarico is sworn in, at which point the blue slip tradition Grassley has kept for district court nominees gives a Democrat a say. And a Democratic majority in the chamber makes it unlikely many nominees get confirmed. Durbin told Grassley he was making “a serious mistake” and offered a preview of coming attractions, “When you have to live with it under a new Chairman, I’m sorry to tell you, but you asked for it.”
That’s the news. But the real story is how Grassley defended all this, as reported by Reuters:
“I want to be very clear: Some Democrats so despise President Trump that for the first time in our nation’s history they’re planning to stonewall a president’s ability to appoint judges,” Grassley said.
That’s some rich irony coming from one of the architects of the GOP’s theft of a SUPREME COURT seat. When President Barack Obama nominated then-Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the D.C. Circuit to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in March 2016, Grassley chaired the Judiciary Committee and helped make sure the nomination never saw the light of day. There was no hearing and no vote, just 293 days of nothing until the nomination expired in January 2017. At the time, Grassley assured everyone the “sky won’t fall with one less justice.”
Garland wasn’t even Grassley’s first try at this. Back when Bill Clinton nominated Garland to the D.C. Circuit, Grassley’s answer was to try to abolish the seat entirely. And in the 2016 lame duck, with Grassley running the committee, the Senate confirmed exactly zero circuit or district court judges, according to the Congressional Research Service. So don’t give Democrats all the credit for stonewalling a president’s ability to appoint judges when it’s Grassley’s signature move.
So is Grassley, who is 93 years young and has retirement rumors swirling around him, so addled that he can’t recall a wildly important moment in American history that secured the conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Court? (He insisted last week that he won’t resign during the lame duck, having already said he doesn’t want “a Democrat governor choosing my successor.” Funny how that works.) I don’t know. But honestly, that’s the kind interpretation.
The alternative is deliberate misinformation of the 2+2=5 variety, where the man who ran the blockade stands up and announces that blockades have never happened. And memory doesn’t seem to be the problem; at an April 2025 town hall in Jefferson, Iowa, Grassley explained the Garland blockade as the custom “when you have a president of one party and a Senate of the other party.”
So, this is Grassley’s own playbook in action, but you wouldn’t know any of that from Reuters’ write-up of his remarks, which runs the “first time in our nation’s history” line without a single word about Merrick Garland. Grassley doesn’t need anyone to forget 2016. He just needs nobody to bring it up.
Earlier: Chair Of Senate Judiciary Committee Defends Decision Not To Confirm Judge Merrick Garland
Donald Trump Goes On The Attack Over Blue Slips
Grassley Telling Trump He Really Doesn’t Want To Have To Vote On An Unqualified Ghost Hunter
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
The post Chuck Grassley Says Democrats Are Stonewalling Judges ‘For The First Time In Our Nation’s History.’ Merrick Garland Would Like A Word. appeared first on Above the Law.
Senate Republicans have until January 3 before Democrats take over the chamber, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley is spending those weeks treating the committee’s rulebook like a list of suggestions. At Tuesday’s hearing, the committee’s first since the GOP’s midterm drubbing, Grassley ditched a whole stack of committee norms. He signaled nomination hearings this week and next, when the bipartisan practice is to space them at least two weeks apart. He lined up as many as seven nominees for a single hearing. He’s calling nominees before staff have cleared their FBI background checks. And he added two Texas district court nominees whose questionnaires landed 10 and 14 days before their hearing, well short of the committee’s 28-day rule.
Those two Texans tell you everything about the vibe. James Sullivan lost his race for the Texas Supreme Court last Tuesday. The White House sent his paperwork to the committee the next day, and Trump announced the pick with a post noting that “Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn highly recommend him!” Lose an election on Tuesday, get a lifetime appointment by the following Tuesday. The DOJ’s Elliot Gaiser runs the Office of Legal Counsel and got a call from Cruz’s office about the job the day after the midterms. Gaiser signed a memo justifying the administration’s lethal strikes on Caribbean boats, and his only apparent tie to Texas is a Fifth Circuit clerkship.
Dick Durbin, the committee’s top Democrat, said the scramble is about filling Texas district court seats before Senator-elect James Talarico is sworn in, at which point the blue slip tradition Grassley has kept for district court nominees gives a Democrat a say. And a Democratic majority in the chamber makes it unlikely many nominees get confirmed. Durbin told Grassley he was making “a serious mistake” and offered a preview of coming attractions, “When you have to live with it under a new Chairman, I’m sorry to tell you, but you asked for it.”
That’s the news. But the real story is how Grassley defended all this, as reported by Reuters:
“I want to be very clear: Some Democrats so despise President Trump that for the first time in our nation’s history they’re planning to stonewall a president’s ability to appoint judges,” Grassley said.
That’s some rich irony coming from one of the architects of the GOP’s theft of a SUPREME COURT seat. When President Barack Obama nominated then-Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the D.C. Circuit to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in March 2016, Grassley chaired the Judiciary Committee and helped make sure the nomination never saw the light of day. There was no hearing and no vote, just 293 days of nothing until the nomination expired in January 2017. At the time, Grassley assured everyone the “sky won’t fall with one less justice.”
Garland wasn’t even Grassley’s first try at this. Back when Bill Clinton nominated Garland to the D.C. Circuit, Grassley’s answer was to try to abolish the seat entirely. And in the 2016 lame duck, with Grassley running the committee, the Senate confirmed exactly zero circuit or district court judges, according to the Congressional Research Service. So don’t give Democrats all the credit for stonewalling a president’s ability to appoint judges when it’s Grassley’s signature move.
So is Grassley, who is 93 years young and has retirement rumors swirling around him, so addled that he can’t recall a wildly important moment in American history that secured the conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Court? (He insisted last week that he won’t resign during the lame duck, having already said he doesn’t want “a Democrat governor choosing my successor.” Funny how that works.) I don’t know. But honestly, that’s the kind interpretation.
The alternative is deliberate misinformation of the 2+2=5 variety, where the man who ran the blockade stands up and announces that blockades have never happened. And memory doesn’t seem to be the problem; at an April 2025 town hall in Jefferson, Iowa, Grassley explained the Garland blockade as the custom “when you have a president of one party and a Senate of the other party.”
So, this is Grassley’s own playbook in action, but you wouldn’t know any of that from Reuters’ write-up of his remarks, which runs the “first time in our nation’s history” line without a single word about Merrick Garland. Grassley doesn’t need anyone to forget 2016. He just needs nobody to bring it up.
Earlier: Chair Of Senate Judiciary Committee Defends Decision Not To Confirm Judge Merrick Garland
Donald Trump Goes On The Attack Over Blue Slips
Grassley Telling Trump He Really Doesn’t Want To Have To Vote On An Unqualified Ghost Hunter
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
