Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to urge my colleagues to oppose the confirmation of Michael Brennan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. By bringing Mr. Brennan's nomination forward without my support, Chairman Grassley and Leader McConnell are breaking with a longstanding Senate tradition that has guaranteed a voice for home State Senators, regardless of party, in the consideration of judicial nominees.

The blue slip is an important part of this institution and its historic respect for the rights of each Senator, as well as the rights of the minority party. As the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Grassley himself wrote in 2015:

This tradition is designed to encourage outstanding nominees and consensus between the White House and home State Senators. Over the years, Judiciary Committee chairs of both parties have upheld a blue-slip process, including [most recently] Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont . . . who steadfastly honored the tradition even as some in his own party called for its demise. I appreciate the value of the blue-slip process and also intend to honor it.

Today, respect for that time-honored blue slip comes to an end. Not only is Michael Brennan being considered on the Senate floor, but tomorrow the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on a nominee for a traditional Oregon seat on the Ninth Circuit for whom neither Oregon Senator has returned a blue slip. I urge my colleagues to recognize that while today's action disrespects my role as the junior Senator from Wisconsin, tomorrow it may well be you. With the majority's choice to end this tradition, each of us is diminished in our own ability to represent the constituents who chose to send us here.

I did not return a blue slip for Michael Brennan because his nomination does not reflect the consensus between the White House and home State Senators that the chairman of Judiciary Committee, Mr. Grassley, praised in 2015. Mr. Brennan did not receive the requisite support from Wisconsin's bipartisan judicial nominating commission, which has been used in some form for nearly four decades to identify candidates for Federal judgeships in my home State. Senator Johnson and I have worked to continue this longstanding process during my tenure in the Senate, and it has actually produced consensus nominees who have been confirmed to two vacancies on our district courts and for two U.S. attorney positions.

More troubling still is a fact made clear in Mr. Brennan's answers to the Judiciary Committee's questionnaire; namely, that President Trump never intended to respect that commission's work for this vacancy. The White House interviewed Michael Brennan for the job on the very day our bipartisan nominating commission began to solicit candidates for its consideration.

Chairman Grassley has made an argument that the White House engaged me in meaningful consultation regarding this vacancy. It is true that White House Counsel Don McGahn called me to inform me that Mr. Brennan was the President's choice. I urged him, instead, to consider consensus nominees who could garner bipartisan support, including Donald Schott, who earned the requisite support of Wisconsin's nominating commission. He also garnered Senator Johnson's and my blue slips in the last Congress as well as the support of a bipartisan majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sadly, he didn't come up for a confirmation vote due to obstruction in setting the calendar--a choice by the majority leader. Unfortunately, instead of nominating a consensus candidate, President Trump chose to move forward in a partisan manner on this vacancy.

Seven years ago, the U.S. Senate respected the prerogative of my colleague and my senior Senator, Mr. Johnson--then a newly elected Senator from Wisconsin--when he objected to a nominee for this very vacancy whose selection he had not had a role in. Mr. Brennan himself, at the time, coauthored an op-ed in our State's largest newspaper that praised Senator Johnson's refusal to return a blue slip for that nominee, Victoria Nourse. When President Obama made a second nomination for this position in 2016, I am confident Senator Leahy would not have allowed that nominee, Donald Schott, to have advanced in the Judiciary Committee without my senior Senator's blue slip.

Today, I am not being accorded the same respect. Today, we send the message that neither this nor a future President needs to respect the role of home State Senators in the selection of judicial nominees. I urge my colleagues to oppose this action and this nominee and this dispensing with a time- honored tradition of this institution.

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