Trump presses Republicans to remove last obstacle for aggressive retribution

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U.S. President Donald Trump hosts a Rose Garden Club lunch at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 21, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President Donald Trump has been able to have the Republican-controlled Senate confirm the vast bulk of his nominees — with the lone exception of his appointees for U.S. attorney offices.

Now, Politico is reporting that the president is leaning on his party to bulldoze the last remaining obstacle preventing his handpicked prosecutors from being fully confirmed. Trump told a gathering of Senate Republicans Tuesday that the long-standing "blue slip" procedure — in which senators from a nominee's home state have to submit "blue slips" agreeing to their nomination before it can move forward — was a "problem" that should be scrapped.

"You know, I have 10 U.S. attorneys who are phenomenal," Trump said. "And the problem is, they’re not going to ever be confirmed, I guess. I put them in, they’ll be there for three or four months, whatever it is, and then they have to leave."

The "blue slip" process is done for nominees for U.S. District court judgeships as well as U.S. attorney nominees in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the committee, has so far refused Trump's demands, and promised to continue it indefinitely after the Senate gained a Republican majority after last November's election. The "blue slip" process has affected some of Trump's more controversial nominees, like Alina Habba for the U.S. Attorney's post in the District of New Jersey, with Sens. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) each declining to return a blue slip.

"Anytime you have a Democrat senator, not even two, just one, they’ll say, because of the time we’re in, ‘we’re not approving that person,'" Trump said during the Tuesday lunch with senators.

“Because of blue slip, I have to tell the person after three months, I’m sorry you’ll have to leave and I’ll put someone else in,” he continued. “This is not constitutional. And I really, I hope you can look at that blue slip thing.”

Tuesday is just the latest example of Trump zeroing in on the "blue slip" tradition. In July, he called out Grassley on his Truth Social platform and slammed the "blue slip" procedure as a "hoax" and a "scam." He complained that despite being in the minority, Democrats had exploited the procedure to impose an "ironclad stoppage" on his nominees coming before the Judiciary Committee.

Click here to read Politico's full report.

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