President Donald Trump is threatening to file a lawsuit against the United States Senate over what is known as the “blue slip” tradition. He claims this long-standing practice is making it impossible for him to appoint federal judges and U.S. attorneys. The blue slip is a custom that is about one hundred years old and is not a formal written rule.
It gives the two senators from a state the ability to approve or disapprove of a president’s nominees for jobs located in their state. According to the United States Constitution, the president has the power to nominate people for these positions, while the entire Senate holds the final power to approve or reject those nominees.
Fox News claims Trump has publicly shared his frustration with the blue slip tradition, calling it a “hoax” and a “scam.” He said, “We’re also going to be filing a lawsuit on blue slipping. You know, blue slips make it impossible for me as president to appoint a judge or a U.S. attorney because they have a gentlemen’s agreement that’s about 100 years old… If you have a president like a Republican, and if you have a Democrat senator, that senator can stop you from appointing a judge or a U.S. attorney in particular.”
Trump wants to remove more power from the Senate and give it to himself
Democrats are using it to block his nominees. He argues that if a president is from one political party and a state has a senator from the other party, that senator can use the blue slip to stop an appointment from happening. The president has been unhappy about this for a while. He previously demanded that Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, stop supporting the practice.
Senator Grassley, however, has consistently defended the tradition. He has stated that he sees it as a norm worth keeping because it helps ensure a balance of power and allows for input from individual states in the nomination process. Even with pressure from Trump, Grassley has kept his support for the blue slip. Trump has used social media to publicly call on Grassley to abandon the custom.
— GoodMorningRooster (@RoosterGM) August 25, 2025
Trump is going to court—literally. He’s vowed to sue over the Senate’s 100-yr-old “blue slip” tradition, a non-binding gentlemen’s agreement that lets senators block judicial & U.S. attorney nominees from their home states. Trump says it’s crippling his ability to appoint… pic.twitter.com/P3Vsz4huMN
The president’s current trouble with getting his nominees confirmed is very different from his experience during his first term. In his first four years in office, Trump successfully appointed 234 federal judges. This included three Supreme Court justices and 54 appellate court judges. However, in the first eight months of his current term, he has only had five judges confirmed. This large difference has made him focus even more on the blue slip tradition, which he sees as a major obstacle to his judicial appointments. It’s not like all of them agree with his current direction anyway, and many former judges disagree with the president’s actions altogether.
The blue slip process is a matter of senatorial courtesy and is not a formal law. Depending on who is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, if a senator withholds a blue slip, it can stop a judicial nominee from even getting a hearing. It is this informal nature of the tradition that Trump is focusing on. He calls it a custom rather than a legal requirement and argues that it is actually unconstitutional.
