'Partisan game': WSJ editorial warns this Trump move could 'come back to bite Republicans'

25 August

President Donald Trump on April 15, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)

President Donald Trump's maneuvers to keep loyalists in key decision-making roles in defiance of traditional checks and balances could backfire when the pendulum swings back in Democrats' favor, according to a new Wall Street Journal editorial.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) editorial board argued that Trump's efforts to keep Alina Habba — his former personal attorney — in her role as acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey stretch the boundaries of the law and could one day be weaponized against the GOP. The WSJ criticized the administration's moves to extend Habba's temporary 120-day "acting" role as "bureaucratic jiu jitsu."

"Ms. Habba resigned as interim U.S. Attorney, and her nomination to the Senate was withdrawn. The Justice Department instead named Ms. Habba as a 'special attorney,' while designating her as the New Jersey office’s new first assistant," the editorial explained. "Voilà, under the vacancy law, according to the administration, Ms. Habba is back in charge as acting U.S. Attorney."

Traditionally, any U.S. district judge or U.S. attorney nominee is subject to the "blue slip" process, in which the U.S. senators of a respective state have to submit "blue slips" approving of a nominee before that person can get a confirmation vote in the Senate Judiciary committee. And because Habba didn't get a blue slip from Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.), the committee didn't vote for her confirmation. Trump's pleas to Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to abolish the blue slip process have so far been rebutted.

The Journal argued that the blue slip process was necessary in order to incentivize presidents to nominate qualified candidates to be prosecutors and judges, and pointed out that Habba had said one of her explicit goals was to "turn New Jersey red." And it cautioned that Republicans may not like being on the opposite end of the "partisan game" in which a president can effectively do an end run around the "advice and consent" role the Constitution granted to the U.S. Senate.

"The worry is that such machinations might become routine to evade Senate confirmation," the Journal wrote. "If the White House can repeatedly name an interim U.S. Attorney, or wait until shortly before that term expires to effect a transformation into acting U.S. Attorney, then the new partisan game will be to see how long an incoming President can operate the government while dodging Senate confirmation."

"... By trying to circumvent it, including his maneuvers for Ms. Habba and his demands for recess appointments, Mr. Trump is setting a precedent that could come back to bite Republicans," the Journal added.

Click here to read the Journal's full editorial (gift link).

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