Welcome to the Monday, April 21, Brew.
By: Lara Bonatesta
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- Sen. Chuck Schumer blocks Trump federal prosecutor nominees via blue slips—what are they?
- This week’s On The Ballot looks at school board authority and what supporters call Parents’ Bills of Rights
- Did you know the state with the longest-running trifecta is Utah, where Republicans have controlled the state government since 1985?
Sen. Chuck Schumer blocks Trump federal prosecutor nominees via blue slips—what are they?
On April 16, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that he would not return blue slips for two of President Donald Trump’s (R) nominees for federal prosecutor positions in New York. Schumer said, “Trump has made clear he intends to use the DOJ, US Attorney offices, and law.”
Without Schumer’s approval, the Judiciary Committee is not expected to proceed with nomination hearings for either Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York or Joseph Nocella Jr. for the Eastern District of New York.
Politico’s Hailey Fuchs and Erica Orden wrote that Schumer’s refusal “sets up a larger dilemma for Senate Republicans around whether they will discard the blue slip precedent in order to push forward with confirming Trump’s judicial picks. If Senate GOP leaders stick to precedent and let Schumer’s position carry weight, Trump won’t be able to install his choices to lead two of the most important prosecutorial offices in the country.”
The Southern District of New York includes New York, Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan counties and hears cases in Manhattan, White Plains, and Poughkeepsie. The Eastern District of New York includes Kings, Nassau, Queens, Richmond, and Suffolk counties and hears cases in Brooklyn and Central Islip. According to Politico, the Southern District covers cases coming from Wall Street, while the Eastern District commonly hears MS-13 gang cases and immigration cases coming from John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The Senate Judiciary Committee uses the blue slip process for federal judge, U.S. attorney, and U.S. marshal nominations. You might be more familiar with blue slips and their use as part of the nomination process for federal judges. Let’s look at their history and how they’re used today.
As part of the nomination process, the Senate Judiciary Committee sends the nominee’s home state senators a blue slip, permitting them to express their approval or disapproval of the nominee. For example, the committee would send blue slips to Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) for a nominee for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
When a senator returns a blue slip to the committee chair, it indicates they have no issue with the nominee, in which case the committee chair will often begin committee proceedings on the nomination. However, when a senator withholds a blue slip, it indicates they don’t approve of the nominee, and proceedings may be delayed indefinitely.
The blue slip policy is subject to the discretion of the committee chair. Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he intended to honor the blue slip precedent. A representative for Grassley said, “Senator Grassley takes a traditional approach to the blue slip precedent, mirroring the application the vast majority of Judiciary chairmen have used over the past century, while encouraging meaningful involvement from the White House and home state senators regarding nominees.”
As part of Ballotpedia’s coverage of federal courts, we maintain a list of judicial nominations with withheld blue slips. Across the last two presidential administrations, senators withheld blue slips from judicial nominees 33 times (out of 568 total nominations). Twenty-five of those nominees were eventually confirmed. (This total does not include times senators withheld blue slips for U.S. Attorney nominees, as Schumer is doing for Clayton and Nocella Jr.)
In a November 2017 editorial published in The Hill, Grassley (who was also the committee chair during the 115th Congress) accused Democrats of abusing their blue slip privileges to “block committee proceedings for political or ideological reasons.”
During the 116th Congress, then-chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that blue slips would be honored only for district court nominees and not circuit court nominees. Of the 21 times senators withheld blue slips during the 116th Congress, 18 nominees (or 86%) were ultimately confirmed, the highest percentage in any session between 2017 and 2025.
Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chair for both the 117th and 118th Congresses during Joe Biden’s (D) presidency, continued to honor blue slips solely for district court nominees.
Click here for more information on blue slips.
This week’s On The Ballot looks at school board authority and what supporters call “Parents’ Bills of Rights”
On April 14, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) signed HB 2129 into law, making West Virginia the 25th state to adopt what supporters call a ‘’Parents’ Bill of Rights.”
This comes after two other states – Washington and Ohio – approved similar laws earlier this year. As we mentioned in our Jan. 23 and Feb. 10 editions of the Daily Brew, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed House Bill 8 into law on Jan. 8, and a Washington superior court judge dismissed a lawsuit against Initiative 2081 on Jan. 27, allowing Washington’s Parents’ Bill of Rights to take full effect.
In our new two-part episode of On The Ballot, host Geoff Pallay talks to Axios Columbus’ Alissa Widman Neese about her reporting on the law in Ohio and what its implementation means for the state.
Pallay then talks to Ballotpedia’s Annelise Reinwald about Parents’ Bills of Rights policies across the country and our newly completed research on the differences in school board authority and responsibilities in all 50 states. We broke down some of the key parts of that research in our April 16 edition of the Daily Brew. Click here to see that write-up.
The term “Parents’ Bills of Rights” refers to laws that explicitly afford parents rights regarding their involvement in their children’s education. In some states, Parents’ Bills of Rights are education-specific. Other Parents’ Bills of Rights are more general, commonly allowing parents to direct their children’s upbringing. Even if there is no statewide statute regarding parents’ rights, some local school districts have passed parents’ rights policies in their jurisdictions.
Ballotpedia has an extensive and growing set of resources on school boards in every state. To learn more about our research on local school board authority, click here.
Subscribe to On the Ballot on YouTube or your preferred podcast app, or click here to listen.
Did you know the state with the longest-running trifecta is Utah, where Republicans have controlled the state government since 1985?
A state government trifecta is a term to describe a single-party government in which one political party holds the governorship and majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Currently, there are 23 Republican trifectas, 15 Democratic trifectas, and 12 divided governments where neither party holds trifecta control.
Aside from Utah, the states with the next longest-running trifectas are Idaho, North Dakota, and South Dakota, which have had Republican trifectas since 1995. Delaware has the longest-running Democratic trifecta, which it acquired in 2009. Alaska, meanwhile, has maintained a divided government since 2015.
Click here to learn more about state government trifectas.