Black Caucus presses Senate Dems to blow up tradition on judges

Politics

Tensions are escalating between Senate Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus over the arcane tradition that gives a single senator veto power over President Joe Biden’s judicial picks.

The Black Caucus quietly met with Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) last week to lobby against the decades-old Senate practice that Republicans have recently used to block one district court nominee and stall another — slowing Biden’s efforts to stock the federal bench.

Both House and Senate Democrats are worried that the GOP will ramp up its roadblocks of Biden judicial picks through the tradition known as “blue slips,” named for the color of the forms that senators return to approve of home-state judicial nominees.