Opinion: One of Biden's biggest achievements is going largely ignored - Waldman
Last edited Mon Jan 17, 2022, 02:26 PM - Edit history (1)
Talk to just about any Democrat right now and you’ll hear disgust and despair. Two centrist senators are refusing to suspend the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. The Biden administration’s handling of the pandemic is facing increasing criticism. A GOP takeover of at least one house of Congress looks inevitable. This era of Democratic rule feels to many like little more than a slog of failure and frustration.
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Here’s the latest: Senate Judiciary Committee chair Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) is moving vital appeals court nominees through the confirmation process by casting aside the “blue slip.” That tradition may have been worthwhile in an era of comity and cooperation, but in an age of partisan polarization it’s become nothing but a tool of obstruction the minority can wield to thwart the majority’s will. Sound familiar? The blue slip is a kind of mini-filibuster, except all it takes is one senator to thwart a judicial nomination.
The way it works is that when the president nominates someone to fill a vacancy, the two senators from the judge’s home state are asked to return a blue piece of paper indicating their consent for the nomination to proceed. It’s a senatorial courtesy, allowing them to weigh in and make sure that only the most upstanding citizens from their state ascend to the bench. Which is all fine until withholding blue slips becomes a regular way for the minority to keep the president from filling vacancies. Under Donald Trump, Republicans did away with the blue slip tradition for appeals court nominations (though it remains for lower district court nominees).
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Republican whining on this matter will no doubt continue, because Democrats are moving with dispatch to fill vacancies. In his first year, President Biden filled 11 appeals court nominees, almost as many as the 12 Trump filled in his first year — which came after Republicans all but shut down judicial confirmations at the end of the Obama administration — and more than any other president in decades. The 29 district court seats Biden filled in his first year are the most of any president since Ronald Reagan.
more..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/14/biden-judicial-vacancies/
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