(The Hill) — Republican senators were appalled by President Donald Trump’s rough treatment of 91-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the Senate’s most senior Republican, on social media and are pushing back on Trump’s attempts to squeeze the senator into abolishing an arcane procedure known as the Senate blue slip.
GOP senators were not pleased that Trump piled so much pressure on Grassley, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to get rid of a long-established Senate tradition. Trump piled on by reposting on Truth Social posts accusing Grassley of being a “RINO” and “sneaky” and standing in the way of Trump’s agenda.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has separately felt the wrath of Trump for his opposition to the tax and spending megabill earlier this month, said Trump appears to be getting bad advice from his staff.
“I think it was a bad — No. 1, Chuck is beloved in our conference. No. 2, the blue-slip policy helps the president. He’s got staff giving him bad advice,” Tillis said.
He argued that keeping in place the tradition of allowing senators to use documents known as blue slips to block district-court-level judicial nominees and U.S. attorney nominees has preserved an important element of bipartisanship in the Senate.
Tillis said getting rid of blue slips would make it even tougher to work with Democrats as Republicans attempt to move legislation that needs 60 votes to pass the Senate, such as the annual spending bills.
“I think the president’s staff have a bad habit of advising him that was a good idea,” Tillis said of Trump’s penchant of taking public shots at Republican allies in Congress when they disagree with him on an issue.
Trump blasted Tillis last month on Truth Social after the North Carolina senator announced he would vote against the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act because of more than $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid. Shortly after the interaction, Tillis said he would not be running for reelection next year.
Tillis said Trump’s staff either failed to intervene before the president targeted Grassley or “somebody told him, ‘You ought to put pressure on him and go on Truth Social.’”
“The staff should have intervened and said, ‘This is not a good idea,’” he said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has bucked the Trump administration on a number of votes, called the president’s shots at Grassley, who has been in the Senate since 1981, “unnecessary.”
“I talked to Sen. Grassley — I think Sen. Grassley has long, long, long been a great team player, and I think he was just a little bit offended at the tone, and that’s not right,” she said, adding: “I’m a defender of the blue slip.”
A Republican senator who requested anonymity said Trump’s targeting of Grassley on Truth Social crossed the line.
“There’s a lot of negative reaction by me and my colleagues to the specific treatment of Sen. Grassley,” the lawmaker said, adding that Trump’s social media posts were discussed by colleagues on the Senate floor during votes.
“There’s a lot of desire to see Chuck Grassley treated correctly. It was really the talk of the floor last night,” the source said.
Grassley has been a loyal Trump ally, steering some of his most controversial nominees through the Senate confirmation process this year, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and, most recently, Emil Bove, Trump’s former defense attorney, whom senators confirmed Tuesday to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Yet that didn’t stop Trump from putting heavy pressure on Grassley on Tuesday night to “step up” and get rid of the blue slip documents senators can use to block nominees to serve as federal district judges and U.S. attorneys in their home states.
Trump declared that he got Grassley reelected to the Senate “when he was down by a lot” and demanded he get rid of the long-established Senate tradition “with a mere flick of a pen.”
The president then reposted one commenter on Truth Social who urged followers to “light up Grassley’s office” and asked, “What is wrong with these Republicans, they must hate America too.”
Trump reposted another post on Truth Social that called Grassley a “RINO,” the acronym for Republican in name only, “sneaky” and “good at playing the good guy instead of being the good guy.”
Grassley said Wednesday that he was “surprised” and “insulted” by Trump’s social media posts.
“Last night, I was surprised to see President Trump on Truth Social go after me and Senate Republicans over what we call the blue slip,” Grassley said in a statement to open a Judiciary Committee hearing on nominations.
“I was offended by what the president said, and I’m disappointed it would result in personal insults,” he said.
Grassley’s public remarks are notable since GOP senators have rarely aired their irritations with the president’s pressure campaigns in public.
Trump also went after Grassley’s age and tenure in the Senate, reposting an item on Truth Social calling for term limits and to “dethrone the kings,” which noted Grassley has served in Congress for more than 50 years.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, defended the tradition of blue slips and pleaded with Trump to “back off” his pressure campaign on Grassley.
“I do not agree with the president on that,” he said of Trump’s call to get rid of blue slips.
“I understand his frustration. President Biden had the same frustration,” he added, noting Republicans used blue slips to block former President Joe Biden’s nominees to key judicial and law enforcement positions in their home states.
Kennedy argued that “for district court judges, senators are much better able … to pick a lawyer from their community that satisfies what I call ‘community standards.’”
“With respect, Mr. President, pretty please, with sugar on top, back off this, because I don’t think the Senate’s going to go along, and I think it’s just a needless fight,” he said.
Even Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), one of Trump’s staunchest allies in the Senate, pushed back on Trump’s effort to eliminate blue slips.
“It happens on both sides,” he said. “We were able to block some bad judges last time with a blue slip.”
Tuberville said he knows Trump “gets frustrated with it” but asserted “it is what it is — it’s why the Senate works.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) backed up Grassley.
“I think the blue slip process is something that’s been used for a long time by both sides, and neither side has violated its usage in the past,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any strong interest in changing that up here.”
Grassley, when he was Judiciary Committee chair in 2017, decided not to honor Democrats’ blue slip objections to nominees at the appellate court level.
Republicans argued that appellate courts often cover several states, so it did not make sense to give one state’s senators power over the nominees.
GOP senators are more open to changing the rules for the floor consideration of lower-level nominees already approved by Senate committees amid efforts by Democrats to delay those nominees by demanding time-consuming procedural votes.
Frustration over those delays is building, and Republican senators discussed various rules changes at a lunch meeting Tuesday.
One proposal is to eliminate the need to vote on cloture to end debate before scheduling a final vote on a nominee. Another proposal is to further condense the two hours of debate time that must elapse between a cloture vote and a final vote. A third proposal is to group nominees in packages and vote on them as a bloc.
“At some point, we may need to look at doing things different on nominees generally if Democrats continue this path of obstruction that they’re on right now,” Thune said.
He noted Democrats have required procedural votes on more than 100 consecutive nominees considered on the floor and haven’t allowed a single civilian Trump nominee to pass by unanimous consent or voice vote, calling it a “historic level of obstruction.”
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