Senate Judiciary Committee Meeting on Judicial Nominees Thursday Morning
https://www.thepostemail.com/2019/02/07/senate-judiciary-committee-meeting-on-judicial-nominees-thursday-morning/The Senate Judiciary Committee is currently meeting to discuss voting on a long list of President Trump’s judicial nominees for circuit courts and U.S. district courts as well as U.S. attorney general nominee William P. Barr.
A third category of nominee is for director of the U.S. Marshalls Service.
Democrats, including ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), are objecting to the apparent lack of the “blue-slip†custom wherein senators from the state in which a nominee sits “gives an opinion on the nominee,†according to Wikipedia.
The committee is currently chaired by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) criticized “Republicans†of rubber-stamping Trump’s judicial nominees thus far and objected to the “qualifications†of the nominees.
Following Durbin, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) objected to questioning of judicial nominees about their “religious beliefs,†likely referring to Sen. Cory Booker’s questioning earlier in the week of Neomi Rao, who Trump nominated to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) followed and disagreed with Lee. Whitehouse said that he expects a “constitutional question†to arise regarding Trump’s possible plan to declare a “national emergency†on the U.S.-Mexico border in order to release funds to build a barrier, which Congress thus far has not funded.
Whitehouse then asked Graham to set standards on limits of “executive power.â€