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The Strange Tradition The Left Is Using To Undermine Republicans
Here’s a mystery that, depending on who you ask, has a couple of very different explanations: Why are so many allegedly “conservative” federal judges now openly revolting against the Trump administration?
Why are these judges discarding any pretense of impartiality — which is why we have judges in the first place — in order to moonlight as Rachel Maddow impersonators and give lengthy interviews to Left-wing media in which they bash Donald Trump?
Specifically, why are so many judges who were appointed by Ronald Reagan — at least four of them, by my count — publicly attacking the president and his administration?
To give just one example, Massachusetts District Judge Mark Wolf, who was appointed by Reagan 40 years ago and retired in November, stated this week that, “our rule of law and our democracy will be doomed” unless Trump is stopped.
Credit: Martha Stewart/Wikimedia.org
Other Reagan appointees have lashed out at Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship, as well as his pardons of January 6 defendants.
It’s the usual hysterics and talking points that we’re all familiar with, but it’s coming from judges who are supposed to be neutral. So, where is this insurgency from the “conservative” judiciary coming from, exactly?
If you ask Democrats, the reason for this phenomenon, of course, is that Donald Trump is Orange Hitler, and even his party can’t stand him anymore. He’s so evil that even judges can’t be expected to act like adults anymore.
If you ask Republicans — especially Trump supporters — many of them will point out, correctly, that Ronald Reagan wasn’t as conservative as we often give him credit for. He did, after all, grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, a move that permanently destroyed the state of California (and many others). So maybe Reagan appointed Leftist judges because, at some level, he harbored sympathies for their ideology.
But the actual reason for this revolt by the allegedly “conservative” judges is none of the above, although, outside of a small number of people, including the law professor Margot Cleveland, no one has pointed this out. The truth is that, indeed, many of these conservative judges are not actually “conservative” at all. But at the same time, in many cases, Reagan’s hands were tied. In many cases, the judges were selected because of something called the “blue slip process,” which removes a huge amount of authority from the democratically elected president.
This is a process that’s worth talking about, in some detail. Most Americans have no idea what a “blue slip” is, or why it’s relevant. Just from a historical perspective, it’s interesting enough. But it’s extremely important to learn about it for practical reasons as well. The blue slip process doesn’t simply explain why so many Reagan judges are attacking Trump. The continued existence of this ridiculous process also helps to explain why Republicans are completely failing to accomplish anything in Congress at the moment. If you want to understand why the GOP has a majority in both houses of Congress, but hasn’t been remotely productive, then you need to know about this.
For his part, the president clearly understands the implications.
On Monday, Trump once again weighed in on blue slips, as he’s been doing for several weeks now.
Watch:
? BREAKING: President Trump RIPS the Senate GOP and Chuck Grassley for letting Democrats obstruct his appointment of US Attorney Alina Habba and others
*SEVEN* US Attorneys will have to quit soon because the GOP IS DOING NOTHING.
“If I put up GEORGE WASHINGTON [in] Virginia… pic.twitter.com/2RgAp8Nq8y
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 8, 2025
Credit: @EricLDaugh/X.com
Here’s how the blue slip process works, and why Trump is furious with congressional Republicans over it. Starting around the 1900s, if the White House wanted to nominate a federal judge or a US Attorney, the Senate Judiciary Committee would send a blue slip to the two senators from that nominee’s home state for approval. And yes, it’s literally a blue slip. It looks something like this:
US Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
If either of the senators disapproved — which they indicated by not returning the blue slip, or by writing nasty words on it — then the nominee was in a lot of trouble. He’d probably never become a judge or a U.S. Attorney. The Senate committee would generally recommend that the full Senate vote against the nomination. So this was a very powerful tool, because it meant that, in the end, just one or two senators out of 100 could tank a candidate’s nomination to be a judge, if those senators were from the nominee’s home state.
Back in the early 20th century, the process made some degree of sense, because the home-state senator might have some useful (and unique) knowledge about the nominee. This was, after all, an era before the internet. Information about individual nominees was often hard to come by.
By the 1960s or so, the blue slip began serving a very different purpose. It was primarily a way for segregationist senators in the South to tank the nominations of federal judges who might enforce civil rights laws and integration. A single negative or unreturned blue slip would completely sink a nomination and prevent any further action in the Senate. So, in this time period, the blue slip process basically gave individual senators a veto power over any nomination.
Then, from the 1970s to today, the blue slip process underwent more changes, depending on which party controlled the Senate. In general, the blue slip has remained extremely important in the confirmation process. If your home senators don’t like you, then you’re in a lot of trouble.
So this is how we ended up with “Reagan-appointed” judges like Mark Wolf in Massachusetts. It’s not that Reagan liked Mark Wolf. The blue slip process dictated that, if Reagan wanted to appoint a federal judge in Massachusetts, then he had to get the approval of John Kerry and Ted Kennedy. He had to appoint a liberal, basically. Reagan’s hand was forced by a very old, very dumb Senate tradition.
It’s important to keep in mind that there’s no law or article in the Constitution about the blue slip process. It’s always been totally arbitrary. It doesn’t even have any basis in any ancient legal traditions or anything like that. And it’s long outlived any usefulness it might have had.
During the first Trump administration, Republican senators appeared to realize this. Therefore, in February of 2019, history was made. For the first time in American history, a federal judge — Eric Miller — was appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals without the support of either of his home-state senators in Washington state. Republicans confirmed Eric Miller even though the Democratic senators failed to return their blue slips.
That should’ve been the moment where the blue slip process died, forever, never to return. Instead, Republicans have kept the blue-slip process alive for district court judges, as well as for US Attorneys. They only abandoned the process for circuit court judges.
As a result, as you may have heard, Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, just had to resign. She wasn’t getting any support from her Democrat home-state senators (Cory Booker and Andy Kim), for obvious reasons. So Republicans — rather than hold a vote on her candidacy — followed the blue slip tradition, and allowed her nomination to die.
This has become a major problem for Trump appointees, from Nevada to California to Virginia. Democrats are using this arcane, ludicrous blue slip “tradition” to derail the agenda of the democratically elected president. And Republicans are going along with it.
Here’s a post from Chuck Grassley, the so-called Dean of the Senate, just a few weeks ago. And for reasons that remain unclear, it seems Chuck Grassley is incapable of writing sentences in coherent English:
The 100 yr old “blue slip” allows home state senators 2 hv input on US attys & district court judges In Biden admin Republicans kept 30 LIBERALS OFF BENCH THAT PRES TRUMP CAN NOW FILL W CONSERVATIVES
— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) August 25, 2025
Credit: @ChuckGrassley/X.com
In other words, Grassley is saying that we should tolerate the fact that Democrats are using the blue-slip process to block Trump’s nominees right now, because during the Biden administration, Republicans used the blue-slip process to block Democrats.
This is an argument that, if Grassley had made it back in 1995 or so, it might be somewhat persuasive. But we are now well past the point where Democrats should be afforded any kind of free political victory, out of a sense of “fairness” or “tradition.” Democrats have become a party that openly celebrates the criminal prosecution and murder of their political opponents. They made it abundantly clear, throughout the last four years, that they’re willing to defile any rule or tradition — including the rule of law, which our entire country depends upon — in order to destroy the Republican Party. It’s laughable to suggest that, if Democrats take over Congress, they’re going to respect a “blue slip” from Republican senators. But that’s what Chuck Grassley and congressional Republicans are suggesting. They’re saying we should keep playing fair, long after our opponents have decided that victory is all that matters.
Only a political movement that’s bent on its own suicide — as well as the suicide of the entire country — would push total nonsense like this. And Donald Trump appears to recognize that fact, which is why he was just caught on a hot mic, expressing his frustration with congressional Republicans, as well as the fact that none of his nominees are getting confirmed.
Watch:
BREAKING – President Trump was just caught on a hot mic calling out “Republicans” for allowing Democrats to run the clock down on his administration.
“I can’t appoint anybody. Everybody I’ve appointed has had their time expire. Then they’re in default, then we’re losing.” pic.twitter.com/ZH8lOQaTIh
— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) December 8, 2025
Credit: @Rightanglenews/X.com
You can understand the frustration because, in addition to not getting his nominees confirmed, he’s not getting anything else through Congress, either. After nearly a year in power, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Republicans have failed to achieve anything of consequence, despite controlling both the House and the Senate. They have monumentally failed to capitalize on their mandate. All of the momentum they had, just a few months ago, is gone.
Yes, Republicans in Congress did successfully fund ICE and border security. They cut some taxes and tightened some welfare requirements. Those were the main achievements of the “big beautiful bill.” And they did pass the Laken Riley Act, which makes it easier to imprison illegal aliens without bail when they commit serious crimes, so that they don’t, say, murder innocent women on college campuses, or drive drunk and wipe out an entire family.
Those are a handful of meaningful accomplishments. But that’s about it. Republicans haven’t copied the DOGE cuts or reduced the size of the federal government in a significant way. In fact, they’ve pledged to re-hire the federal bureaucrats who were terminated during the shutdown. Additionally, the Republican-controlled Congress has failed to pass any kind of national ban on child mutilation in the name of “gender-affirming care,” even though the White House issued an executive order to that effect. Republicans have failed to implement national voter ID laws to secure future elections and prevent illegal aliens from voting. They’ve failed to do anything about the hordes of illegal aliens who are allowed to obtain commercial driver’s licenses. They haven’t gotten rid of Obamacare, which has made health insurance far more expensive — and considerably worse — for almost everyone. They haven’t passed any bills that might lower the cost of living, including proposed legislation that would eliminate red tape affecting energy and construction projects, cap interest payments on certain loans, and so on.
Republicans haven’t achieved much in Congress. So what have they been doing? Well, they’ve been going out of their way to appeal to audiences who despise them and everything the conservative movement represents.
Here’s Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah on CNN:
Watch:
‘Republican’ Sen. John Curtis: “All of us need to wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and say ‘What am I doing specifically today… to make our immigrants feel more welcome.'”
No, I don’t think I will. pic.twitter.com/iDXftXZkJb
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 7, 2025
Credit: @greg_price11/X.com
Notice how, even though he’s giving the CNN anchor exactly what she wants, she still berates him. She’s still not satisfied with his answer. Why would she be? She recognizes weakness when she sees it. And so does the rest of the Left. They’ll take full advantage of anyone who just wants to be “liked.”
As for John Curtis, he’s completely inverted the entire issue. No, John, you have it backwards. We’re not the ones who should be spending our time fretting about foreigners. We aren’t the ones who have an obligation to those people. It’s not our job to cater to them or make them feel welcomed or included. Every immigrant should wake up every morning and ask themselves what they can do to show their gratitude to this country and its people. They are the ones who should be asking themselves what they can do to contribute to our country and help and serve our people. The obligation is on them.
The problem is not that Americans lack a welcoming spirit. We are more welcoming and generous than anyone else in the world. Most other countries won’t even pretend to care about the plight of foreigners. We are welcoming. We’re too welcoming. We’re too nice. The problem is that the immigrants who come here often lack any semblance of gratitude or humility, nor do they recognize any duty to this country or its native citizens. They come here with a list of demands. And even when those demands are met — which they shouldn’t be — they don’t even say thank you.
That’s the problem. But no Republican politician will ever say that. So instead, we get lots of platitudes and lots of inaction. We get elderly Republicans defending “blue slips” and Senate “traditions,” as the leadership of the Democratic Party openly plots our destruction. These people do not care about the unwritten rules of the Senate or whatever. They want one thing, and one thing only: The power that Republicans are currently squandering.
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