WASHINGTON _ A conservative group that had an important role in placing Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court will launch a big-money effort Monday to get President Donald Trump's lower-court nominees confirmed by the Senate.
Concerned Veterans for America, part of the network financed by the industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch, will begin its campaign to engage its activists at the local level, primarily in states where Democratic senators could block the Trump nominees.
Getting the confirmations is "one issue that Republicans can all agree on: We need to fill these vacancies," said Marc Lucas, executive director of the group.
With more than 120 judicial vacancies, Trump has a huge number of federal judgeships to fill, giving Republicans an enormous opportunity to remake the federal courts.
Most prominent are the vacancies on circuit courts of appeal, which often set legal precedent and in effect guide federal law in their respective regions unless the Supreme Court steps in.
Concerned Veterans' efforts includes a new website, which the group hopes will mobilize its members to lobby lawmakers in states including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Colorado, where they fear Democratic senators could hold up key nominations.
The group, which claims to have placed more than 350,000 phone calls into Senate offices on Gorsuch's behalf, this time plans phone banks, ads and mailers in states where Trump nominees are blocked. The cost of the campaign was not revealed.
"We've seen how important that (judicial) branch is to uphold our policy agenda," Lucas said.
The group also is targeting the Senate Judiciary Committee's longstanding "blue slip" tradition.
A state's two senators give the committee a "blue slip" with their opinion on a nominee. A negative blue slip usually dooms the choice.
The committee's chairman has traditionally decided how much weight to give the tradition.
"We believe the blue slip should not be an opportunity for any party to obstruct the judicial nominating process," Lucas said. "Not all Democrats are doing that, but there are some who are trying to take these nominations hostage by utilizing this old, archaic Senate tradition and not judging these folks on their legal qualifications."
The Alliance for Justice, a liberal group that tracks the federal judicial system, noted that many vacancies are the result of Republicans blocking or slowing President Barack Obama's nominees. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings, let alone a vote, on Obama's March 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court to replace the late Antonin Scalia. Trump this year nominated Gorsuch to fill the vacancy.
"It's very, very rich that Republicans now are crying foul when Democrats are insisting that they're entitled to the same rights Republicans had," said Daniel Goldberg, the group's legal director.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has said he plans to usually adhere to the blue slip policy for lower court nominees, but suggested that he could call for a committee vote for circuit court judges, even if the home-state senators object.
"The blue slip is more respected for district court judges historically," Grassley said in a May interview on C-SPAN. Circuit court nominees, he said, are "much more a White House decision."
The committee's top Democrat last month warned against disregarding the discretion given the home-state senators, noting that it's been a Senate tradition since 1917.
"The blue slip is the one opportunity that home-state senators have to weigh in on judges that will serve their constituents and it has always been taken seriously," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. She said blue slips were honored during Obama's presidency, even when Republicans did not return slips for more than two years.
"No Democratic senator has said that he or she will reject all Trump judicial nominees," Feinstein said. "Rather, they will review nominees on a case-by-case basis. This effort isn't a response to obstruction _ there's been no obstruction. This is about giving conservative outside groups the ability to handpick judges."
Conservative Veterans has already has run online ads in North Dakota and Michigan, targeting the state's Democratic senators. The group was allied with the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, which launched a $140,000 ad campaign in Michigan in June, accusing Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters of "partisan politics" for not returning blue slips for Trump's choice of Joan Larsen for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Both senators returned their blue slips this month.
The veterans group's other targets could include Minnesota's two Democratic senators, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, who have yet to return blue slips for David Stras, Trump's choice for a vacancy on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Klobuchar said Thursday on Minnesota Public Radio that she met with Stras once and plans to again, denying suggestions that she is blocking his nomination.
A spokesman for Franken said the senator was still reviewing Stras' "lengthy record" before giving his approval. Franken's office faulted the White House for nominating Stras without first consulting the senators, a traditional courtesy.
"Rather than discuss how senators traditionally approached circuit court vacancies or talk about a range of potential candidates, the White House made clear its intention to nominate Justice Stras from the outset," spokesman Michael Dale-Stein said.
