Trump takes aim at Senate 'blue slip' tradition as GOP resists change

Much of his anger stemmed from the blue slip's role in derailing a pair of his hand-picked U.S. attorney nominees - Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan - last year.

But the practice, which has been around since World War I, is likely not going anywhere, given that it's been a valuable tool for minority parties to block nominees.

The tradition allows for home state senators to weigh in on judicial nominees, giving them a say on who does and doesn't move forward. Returning a blue slip is the equivalent of giving a thumbs up to the nominees moving forward, while keeping the slip effectively blocks the process.

While the tradition was used to block both Halligan and Habba, both of whom served as Trump's attorneys while in between stints in the White House, Republicans have still been successful in confirming several of the president's judicial picks.

Grassley noted in a post on X that "nearly 1/5 of the 417 nominees who were confirmed this [year] went" through his committee.

Four of those were from Democratic senators with blue slips in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan and Minnesota, where the Trump administration's usage of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has faced legal challenges.

"Putting aside political differences, he is respected across the board in Minnesota, and so I thought he would be a good U.S. attorney," Smith said.

There have also been several Senate Republicans who have pushed back against Trump's demand to decimate the tradition, including Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and John Kennedy, R-La., both members of the Judiciary Committee.

They argued that the entire point of the blue slip was to ensure that individual senators got to have a say on the matter, and that the "issue cut both ways."

Like many instances of Trump's desire to take a sledgehammer to Senate tradition or procedure, Republicans largely aren't biting.

And neither are members of Senate GOP leadership, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who last year argued that there was more of an "intense feeling about preserving the blue slip maybe even than there is the filibuster."

"There were two vacancies," Thune said. "They wanted one Dem, we gave them a Dem, we got a Republican person into that position in South Dakota. So it's - there are examples of how that process, I think, works to our advantage, and that's what most senators hang on to when it comes to a discussion about the blue slip."