Monica Ramirez Almadani is the second Biden nominee to the Central District of California to have served as President of Public Counsel, after Judge Hernan Vera.
Background
A native Californian, Ramirez Almadani received a B.A. from Harvard University in 2001 and a J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2004.
After law school, Ramirez Almadani clerked for Judge Warren Ferguson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She then joined the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project as a staff attorney. In 2009, Ramirez Almadani moved to the Department of Justice as counsel to Assistant Secretary Tom Perez and then as senior counsel and chief of staff for Deputy Attorney General James Cole.
In 2012, Ramirez Almadani moved to Los Angeles to be a federal prosecutor. Three years later, she shifted to the Attorney General’s Office, serving as a senior advisor to then Attorney General Kamala Harris.
In 2017, Ramirez Almadani joined Covington & Burling as a special counsel. She held that position until she became President of the public interest law firm Public Counsel.
History of the Seat
Ramirez Almadani has been nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, to a seat vacated on April 1, 2022, by Judge John Kronsdadt.
Legal Experience
While Ramirez Almadani has held a variety of positions throughout her legal career, she has particularly made a name for herself in the field of immigration law. For example, she represented Juan Manuel Montes, a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, who sued the Trump Administration after he was deported. See Deported DACA Recipient Sues Trump Administration for Unlawfully Withholding Information, Targeted News Service, Apr. 18, 2017. Ramirez Almadani was the primary attorney in the suit under the Freedom of Information Act. See Ray Sanchez, Laura Jarrett and Rosalina Nieves, Judge Attacked by Trump Could Order Return of Deported Man, CNN.com, Aug. 23, 2017.
Ramirez Almadani also represented the California state legislature as amicus curiae in a Chicago suit challenging Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ conditioning of grants to the end of sanctuary city policies. See City of Chi. v. Sessions, 888 F.3d 272 (7th Cir. 2018). She was part of the legal team for the City of Los Angeles in another suit challenging the same policies under Attorney General Bill Barr. See City of Los Angeles v. Barr, 941 F.3d 931 (9th Cir. 2019).
Similarly, in her role as co-Director of the Immigration Clinic of the University of California, Irvine, Ramirez Almadani represented Kelvin Hernandez Roman, who sued the Orange County Sheriff’s Department for failing to comply with California sanctuary laws. See
Writings & Commentary
In her roles, Ramirez Almadani has frequently commented on the law in the media. For example, she criticized Republican John Cox’s statements on forcing homeless individuals to get mental health treatment. See Meghan Roos, Mental Health Experts Assail John Cox’s Plan to ‘Force’ Homeless Into Treatment, Newsweek.com, June 29, 2021.
In 2022, Ramirez Almadani was Berkeley Law’s graduation ceremony speaker. See Staci Zaretsky, Law Schools Are Bringing Out the Best Legal Names as Speakers for In-Person Graduation Ceremonies, Above the Law, May 11, 2022.
Overall Assessment
Of all the pending California nominees, Ramirez Almadani is likely to draw the most opposition. Republicans will likely object to her work at the ACLU and in suing the Trump Administration. Nonetheless, the expanded Democratic senate majority should be sufficient to confirm her.
The Vetting Room 
This is a spectacular nominee. Instead of Jabari Wamble, I was actually hoping Biden didn’t resubmit her name to the senate so that he could still be considering her for the 9th circuit vacancy instead. She really should be nominated to the appeals court so she could get heavy consideration in the event Sotomayor stepped down. After Dale Ho, she is probably second on my list of district court nominees that should have been nominated to a circuit court instead.
LikeLike
There are a number of long serving District Court Judges in California who should be receiving consideration for elevation to The 9th Circuit. A lot of these nominees being appointed to the Circuit need to crawl before they walk in my opinion.
LikeLike
Agree with this. Jesus Bernal or Fernando M. Olguin would be good picks for this opening.
LikeLike
Democrats have been unanimous on judges and some Republicans have joined them, but Almadani could draw opposition from a Democrat or two.
LikeLike
Which ones? Almadani doesn’t strike me as being any more controversial than several of Biden’s previous nominees, all of which received unanimous Democratic support.
LikeLike
@Frank
Obviously Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who’s up for reelection. Almadani worked for the ACLU and sued some areas for opposing California’s Sanctuary State law. Yeah, this one is controversial.
LikeLike
Lot of choices to replace Paul Watford, here’s hoping he or she is a good one.
LikeLike
I still maintain the Joe Manchin will be a yes on any Biden nominee unless they have said mean things about Republicans or have been openly partisan. So far, Dale Ho (who I still like a lot) is the only one I’ve seen who might fall into this category.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Has Senator Sinema ever expressed views on the types of judicial nominees she supports or opposes?…..She’s voted AYE for every Biden judicial nominee – so far
LikeLike
Rick, I know she is in favor of increasing the filibuster back to 60. On the other hand she is similar to Graham and has said a few times that she gives broad deference to Presidents as long as the nominee is highly qualified.
She is also fairly progressive on abortion and LGBT rights, so she has no problems supporting nominees who have worked on Dem campaigns or for Liberal advocacy groups. Seems strange in conjunction with her strict filibuster position, but that’s the breaks I guess.
The one wild card here is I genuinely have no idea how her party change might affect her voting habits
LikeLike
When she became an independent, Sinema made a comment about how she won’t change her approach to judicial nominations, which (in her words) focused on qualifications rather than ideology. I don’t buy much of what Sinema says, but given that she’s been a yes on every Biden nominee (and voted yes on more Trump nominees than most Dems), she might actually believe that. That being said, I think Sienna’s main view on nominees (and everything, let’s be honest) is what she can get out of it, so who knows.
Almadani will be a closer vote than someone like Jennifer Rearden for sure, but any risk of not being confirmed is minimal. If Schumer managed to get Myrna Perez, Jennifer Sung, and Arianna Freeman confirmed to appellate seats, confirming Almadani to C.D. Cal. won’t be any more difficult.
LikeLike
Still no Wamble. Al other nominees have officially been sent to the senate. The administration needs to comment as to what’s going on with Wamble. We are approaching two years this seat on the 10th has been vacant.
(https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/01/31/nominations-sent-to-the-senate-94/)
LikeLike
Agreed. I wonder if Biden wants to bring back blue slips, and there are negotiations going on regarding who the nominee will be.
LikeLike
Any talk whatsoever about bringing back blue slips for
Circuit court nominees by the administration would be absolutely insane. At the very least there should be no talk of it before the Democrats get 4 years without them just like Republicans did. I’m actually gonna believe the administration isn’t this dumb, particularly after increasing their majority by one seat.
LikeLike
Amazing.
Now can we finally sound the alarm?
This issue did NOT start at the failure to renominate. It started when Wamble was excluded from SJC hearings last fall and we couldn’t understand why. The SJC hearing snub is telling because it suggests that the issue is not between the WH and the KS senators (which would/should have been concluded by the time the nomination was made), but probably between Durbin/sen Dems in general and the KS senators.
I would only support the tanking of Wamble if it results in a more progressive nomination. And that’s hard to see happening.
All the Biden-Believers here better brace yourselves, your ability to make excuses for him will surely be tested.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t think bringing back blue slips for the circuit courts is a bad thing, in fact it would be a great thing.
LikeLike
So Republicans get 4 years to pack the circuit courts with 54 young conservative Trump judges, in many cases with no input from Democrat senators. Then in return Democrats get two years, expand their majority for the next two years by defying history only to give up the one tool that can allow them to continue countering the right shift of the courts by going back to blue slips??? Yea that would definitely be a good thing if your name is Mitch McConnell or Leonard Leo… Haaaaaaa
LikeLike
Anyone who calls out biden incompetence is smeared immediately, failure to worship the ground he walks on this forum warrants a penalty.
The same man who wanted to nominate a right wing hack chad meredith to a lifetime judicial position, if not for rand pauls temper tantrum
LikeLike
IMO, something came up with Wamble’s nomination that Biden/Durbin etc. don’t like which is why he is in limbo.
As to bringing back the blue slip rule for Circuit court nominees, why would they do that when they’ve ignored it for higher court judges the past two years?
I do agree if there’s an issue, pull him and nominate someone else, the seat has been vacant long enough.
LikeLike
The latest QFR’s are up for the Dec nominees
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/12/13/2022/nominations
LikeLike
Hopefully, this is my last word on Bjelkengren. The fact that McConnell, who’s never met a Republican judicial nominee to vote against, went to the senate floor to talk about this shows that he’s just desperate to sink at least one Biden nominee, just one. Or to peel off at least one Dem vote for the first time.
If Bjelkengren’s performance is good enough for Thomas Griffith, it’s good enough for me:
https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2023/01/31/biden-nominee-failed-senators-constitutional-pop-quiz-heres-what-ex-judges-had-to-say/?cmp=share_twitter&slreturn=20230031182331
LikeLike
What did Griffith say? The article is paywalled.
LikeLike
The failure of a judicial nominee to answer questions about the U.S. Constitution during a recent nomination hearing is still reverberating through Congress. The incident is eliciting both sympathy and criticism for the nominee while raising questions about the nomination process itself from former judges who once participated in it.
During her hearing last week, Spokane County Superior Court Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren, a nominee for a federal trial court in Washington, failed to answer Sen. John Kennedy’s questions about the meaning of Article II and V of the Constitution, prompting criticism from Republicans.
But a former federal judge said pop quiz-like questions may not be helpful in determining if a person is ready for a seat on the bench.
I’m not certain of the overall value of how a nominee for a judicial position, particularly for court of appeals judges, how they do on the spot,” Thomas Griffith, who retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2020, said in an interview.
Tuesday on the floor of the U.S. Senate with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, asking if the incident raises questions about the caliber of those Biden hopes to fill the federal bench.
“Is the bar or merit and excellence really set this low?” McConnell said.
The White House and Bjelkengren did not respond to requests for comment.
Regular watchers of Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearings are no stranger to Kennedy’s legal inquisitions; the Louisiana Republican often quizzes nominees on basic legal tenets.
But former judges said that they were given material to work with in preparing for their hearings, and how Biden’s nominee failed to account for Kennedy’s query seemed problematic.
Griffith remembered being called into the Department of Justice on the eve of his hearing for what he called a “murder board.”
You’re in this big conference room with lots of lawyers asking questions as if they’re senators asking you questions and giving suggestions on how to give better answers,” he said of the practice hearing, which aimed to humble nominees and refresh them on difficult questions before going before the real committee.
He also said he made a point to brush up on his constitutional law and other areas he thought senators would grill him on thanks to past hearing transcripts he was given by the DOJ.
“I got some sense of what was on the senators’ minds when they were talking to other nominees,” Griffith, now a partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth, said. “I feel I knew more law on the eve of my confirmation hearing than I did since I took my bar exam.”
Former Middle District of Pennsylvania District Judge John E. Jones III, now the president of Dickinson College, also said he was grilled by a “murder board” after being advised of past lines of questioning ahead of time.
“It makes you completely apprehensive about the hearing the next day, but it helps you prepare,” he said before admitting the DOJ grilling was “horrible.”
“You think ‘if it’s going to be like this, do I even want to do this?’” he added.
After reading about Bjelkengren’s hearing, Jones offered a mix of sympathy and constructive criticism.
“[For] [a]nyone who’s been in that position, it evokes a visceral reaction. You can imagine yourself being asked those questions,” he said, before wondering if she had studied senators’ previous questions like he had.
Griffith, who said he wasn’t comfortable speaking specifically to the Bjelkengren incident, joked that “If I was a nominee today, I’d look at every previous question Kennedy asked.”
One former federal judge, who asked not to be named, said that while he tripped up on a fundamental question in regards to executive branch power.
“Nominees can’t be expected to answer detailed or technical questions, but the major articles of the U.S. Constitution are quite fundamental, particularly Article II,” the judge said. “I sympathize with nominees. It’s a difficult position to be [in].”
Bjelkengren has served as a Spokane County Superior Court judge since 2019, and before that, was an administrative law judge for Washington State’s Office of Administrative Hearings and an assistant attorney general in the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. According to her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire, she has presided over 130 jury or bench trials that have gone to verdict.
It’s not the first time a nominee has slipped up like this. In 2017, former Federal Elections Commission Commissioner Matthew Petersen, a nominee for a federal district court in Washington, didn’t answer Kennedy’s question about what a motion in limine is and eventually withdrew his nomination.
John Collins, a professor at George Washington University, said that while he doesn’t think Bjelkengren will withdraw like Peterson, the incident shows that the White House may need to better prepare nominees to expect these types of questions.
“[I]t might behoove the White House to prep them on some of this stuff if senators are going to insist on asking about it,” Collins said.
As for the nomination hearing process itself, Griffith argued that nominees should be known for how they handle the deliberative process, not their legal agility.
“I’m not certain those attributes are measured well in the hearing itself,” he said. More is learned when a nominee is measured by their body of work and “their reputation for being thoughtful and careful,” he suggested.
Still, Griffith stressed that the process as it exists is one that must be respected.
“These are senators, they represent the people in their state. I give a lot of deference to them, they get to ask what they want to ask,” he said. “If they think something is worth pursuing, then they ought to be able to do it.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah I didn’t really care for Bjelkengren before, but the Dems should just push her through now just to spite McConnell.
If I were a Dem senator, I’d definitely put together a list of all the unqualified hacks McConnell has confirmed and give a floor speech about that – granted, that would probably suck up all the floor time this Congress because of how many hacks the Republicans put through. Moscow Mitch is the last person Dems should be listening to on judges.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agree with your Moscow Mitch points, but I don’t want hacks on either side of the aisle.
LikeLike
I was one of the ones who was sounding the alarm weeks ago about jabari wamble, i was smeared and denigrated as a troll who was never satisfied, now this issue is here everyone is monday morning quarterback. I warned you.
Dequan, i remember precisely you saying ”if he doesn’t get sent with the other batch of nominees” then we can show concern or something along those lines.
So we can all agree to panic now right? and call out the biden administration ineptitude and incompetence right?
This is why i laugh when you and others insist kanne vacancy on the 7th circuit , an actual republican seat, will be filled, or even have a nominee this year.
If the biden administration are that incompetent to leave this kansas vacancy open for two years, then you expect me to believe
Frank your a troll and a right wing hack, no serious liberal or progressive would think blue slips on circuit nominees should be brought back, the thought alone is asinine. Your a right wing troll and you will be treated as such from now on.
Now to end my point, this is who biden is, i will bet you top dollar the issue is with the two KS red state senators , not with biden or the democrats, and biden is simply afraid to force his way like trump did and be dammed what the GOP senators say.
Only one black man nominated for appellate vacancy and that one took over a year! to confirm
the other… gets pulled because biden cowardly tendencies to be bipartisan rather than move the ball in a progressive fashion. Its not that unlikely to even say he might be too much of a coward to nominate someone to the 5th circuit as well , a sensible democratic president wouldn’t care what hacks like cruz and coryn have to say on appellate vacancies.
LikeLike
@aangren
I definitely admit I am a little concerned about Wamble now. I wasn’t the last time you mentioned it but now I have some concern. There is no reason being given & I looked him up online today & nothing has been updated about him since last year so I’m not sure what is going on. I’ll stick to my position about him & the 7th vacancy but I will admit I am much more nervous today then I was a week ago about the former.
As for the 5th vacancy, I actually am a little more confident about that vacancy only because of what senator Cornyn said last week at the SJC hearing. He said Biden gave him & Cruz 3 weeks to give them names. That is even less time than I would have figured they would have been given.
LikeLike
While I would obviously not complain if she went senior sooner, if Kim McLane Wardlaw waits about a year, it would be just enough time for Ramirez-Almadani to get some seasoning on the district court before being elevated.
LikeLike
Now I’m wondering what is going on with Jabari Wamble? Did something come up from his background or did he perform poorly in prepping for the committee hearing? Or is Wamble having second thoughts about accepting the position? After the confirming of Andrew Mathis, it can’t be an issue of the Senators.
LikeLike
If I had to speculate, perhaps he was offered a big pay day to be a law partner & is having second thoughts about continuing on a government salary. If that is the case, I would rather find out now rather than waste the SJC & floor time to confirm him. We don’t need a repeat of George Hazel or Paul Watford & have yet another judge in their 50’s resigning early for a big pay day.
LikeLike
Here’s another red state where the senators’ “good faith” should have made Biden move faster to fill district court vacancies:
Kennedy, the senator of Louisiana, successfully negotiated with Democrats on confirming a circuit court nominee last Congress. But he said the White House “hasn’t seemed to be in a real big hurry on the district court appointees.”
“We have discussed some names, but the names that the White House has sent to me, I’m not going to support and they know that,” he told Insider. “I’m not looking for activists or ideologues. I’m looking for good lawyers who will make good judges.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/democrats-biden-trump-era-judicial-confirmations-courts-blue-slips-2023-1
There are two things in this article that jump out at me:
The WH definitely had (have?) a strategy to only focus on blue state district courts. I disagree with that approach. I would have preferred for them to work to fill all. In fact, I would think that they wouldn’t need to focus too closely on blue state nominees, since Biden has largely left that to Dem senators. This gives the nominations team a freer hand to engage more with Republicans. Jeez, we all have to multitask and juggle multiple assignments at work, why can’t the WHCO?
Second thing, it might not be “good faith” but good strategy when reasonable GOP senators work with the WH to fill a vacancy that they *cannot* block. They won’t necessarily do the same for vacancies that they can block. This is why the blue slip debate is ramping up. With the 120+ Dem (Trump) to 12 GOP (Biden) blue slip disparity, expect this to be a constant issue for Durbin to defend. The pressure would be greater if actual Dem senators now come out against keeping it, instead of just advocacy groups.
I’m very curious to know what names the WH offered (though we probably will never know). There’s no way the WH sends them flaming liberals. This would suggest that Kennedy is willing to block moderate nominees, or even every nominee.
LikeLike
I am excited for the next business meeting, the first tangible display of new power gotten by the democrats new expanded majority.
I look forward to hearing disingenuous hack senator cruz whine and bloviate and throw temper tantrums on nominees and then watches as they all get voted to the floor with nothing he or hawley or cotton can do about it.
I hope this is a recurring theme the next two years, whining and bloviating, then ignoring their senseless jargons and diatribes and voting them all unt the senate floor.
The audacity and temerity of mcconell to take issue with bjelkengren when he rubber stamped almost every every right wing federalist society hack and lunatic person trump nominated, it would be laughable if it wasn’t so insulting.
This makes me support bjelkengren even more and i look forward to her confirmation and hopeful eventual nomination to the 9th circuit.
Just the audacity of these disingenuous hacks to feign outrage when they rubber stamped goons like van dyke to appellate courts is insane.
The vast majority of GOP senators are vile disgusting members whose opinions should hold no merit, i look forward to hopefully several more partisan line votes out of the committees and also more cruz whining into oblivion , when he has no power to stop any nominee.
LikeLike
@aangren
While we don’t always agree, I 100% agree with the first part of what you said. Watching Cruz go on a 5 minute rant about how all Democrats do is stick together & vote yea in unison on every Biden nominee so can they just for once stand up & vote down Dale Ho, only for a few minutes later watch every Democrat stand up & vote yes on him, has to be one of the judicial related highlights of the last two years. I know as a Christian I shouldn’t take so much joy in another man’s pain but God will just Ave to forgive me on that one… Haaaaa
I have my alarm set for tomorrow to be ready to watch the SJC 10am sharp. Now I just need to see a nominations hearing pop up on their site today for next Wednesday.
LikeLike
Republicans have still not announced their committee assignments so we better hope they get it sorted today and an organizing resolution voted on tonight. Or else there’d be a tied committee ratio still tomorrow, leaving our best nominees still in limbo until Welch can officially join.
LikeLike
I hope this is not an intentional stalling by the Republicans, they have had ample time to fix their committee issues. Enough of these games
LikeLike
Why is this even an issue? There are 51 Democrats & 49 Republicans. Why can’t Durbin just submit the 11 Democrats for the SJC regardless of if the Republicans submit 10 or zero?
What’s the recourse if Republicans went two years without submitting their members? Whatever the answer to that question is, Durbin needs to do it tomorrow. The idea that we have to wait an extra week or longer to vote these nominees to the floor, some of who have been waiting over a year, just because Republicans can’t get their crap together shouldn’t even be an afterthought, let alone a reality.
LikeLike
Unfortunately, Ben is correct. Committee membership isn’t just a result of names on a list. They have to be voted by the full senate. The full senate approval is usually pro forma, but is still needed and cannot happen if one party still hasn’t finalized their assignments. If this doesn’t get resolved by tonight, expect delays. Unless Durbin is absolutely sure that there will be Republican absences tomorrow.
Remember, without the full slate of organizing resolutions, the senate uses the ones from the previous congress to operate. And since Leahy and Sasse is no longer in the Senate, that means the SJC is still technically split until Welsh can be voted onto it (along with everyone else).
Remember, again, that this was the tactic McConnell used in 2021 to extract pledges from Manchin and Senima about the filibuster. After January 20, 2021, when the new Goergia senators and VP Harris officially came into office, the senate was still operating under the 116th congress’s rules, so Republicans were still in control.
As pedantic as these things seem, they obviously matter.
LikeLike
WOW… Senate rules consistently blow my mind about how insane & outdated they are. Nominees that were voted out of the SJC last year have to be returned to the senate but the membership from that same committee remains the same until the new congress votes on new membership.
It’s funny how I never learn about these rules until Republicans go from the majority to minority. Democrats just go along to get along when the situation is reversed.
LikeLike
Wait minute, I think all the assignments are done and voted on already. Here’s the list of all senators and their assignments for the current senate:
senate.gov/general/committee_assignments/assignments.htm
LikeLike
The link goes to the senate page with various links on it so I’m not sure which one pertains to the assignments. But I trust if you say it that it is done. Both Leahy & Sasse are still listed on the SJC home page, but they aren’t always the quickest to update things.
LikeLike
Sorry, it’s one of those weird links that takes you to a homepage instead of the page you actually want to share. At any rate, never mind, it doesn’t list the committees the new senators are on, so I guess they are using the old assignments. For example, “Schmitt, Eric (R-MO)” is blank
And I couldn’t find the 118th organizing resolution, so it wasn’t passed yet, so we are back to what we said earlier. Hopefully they’ll vote on it later today? If not, I don’t see/know how the business meeting tomorrow can proceed, since even absent GOP senators can still vote NAY by proxy.
LikeLike
I saw a tweet from Punchbowl News saying the GOP side would be set and ready to vote on the organizing resolution tonight. We’ll see. As I understand it, all the standing committees and previously set membership is considered always active from one Congress to the next because of their six year terms, unlike the House. But any new Senators’ assignments or new chairmen would still need to be voted on through an organizing resolution.
LikeLiked by 1 person
All due respect to the folks who keep pushing the Biden is a coward yadda yadda line, Andre Mathis and Arianna Freeman were both strongly opposed by Republican senators from their states and yet Biden and Democrats held firm and they were confirmed.
This notion that all of a sudden he is cowed by two Republican senators from Kansas is a bunch of garbage IMO.
Whatever the issue with Wamble is (and we deserve to know what it is), it’s not because Biden or Durbin is scared.
It has to be something that has come up that they don’t like.
Whatever it is though, it needs to be dealt with, even if it means nominating someone else.
Long time to fill that seat.
LikeLike
SJC member senator Richard Blumenthal has now publicly come out against blue slips…
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/30/senators-prepare-showdown-over-judges-blue-slips/)
LikeLike
Interesting. Personally, I am actually still in favor of keeping the blue slips in place because I think there is a sound logic behind it. But that’s assuming senators are working in good faith.
I’d like to see the White House work hard the next few months to get as many reasonable packages together as they can. If certain senators continue to stonewall though I would be in favor of breaking the tradition on a case by case basis. Just my two cents though.
LikeLike
I think a good gauge on which senators will work in good faith is to look at what nominees are still outstanding after two years for US attorney. Here are the remaining US attorney seats that have yet to have a Biden nominee. I will omit Delaware & the Northern District of Illinois because both of those intentionally have Trump holdovers.
Alabama – All 3 districts
Arkansas – Both districts
California – 1 of the 4 districts
Florida – 1 of the 3 districts
Iowa – Both district
Kansas
Kentucky – Both districts
Louisiana- 1 of the 3 districts
Mississippi – 1 of the 2 districts
Missouri – Both districts
Nebraska
Oklahoma – All 3 districts
South Dakota
Texas – 1 of 4 districts however a name has been recommended
Wyoming
LikeLike
Very excited for tomorrow’s business meeting.
I’m not too worried about the organizing bill either. Absolute worst case scenario Graham will still abstain or vote in favor of nearly every nominee, so the Senate will have plenty of people to vote on.
LikeLike
I am having a difficult time definitively making up my mind about the blue slip.
On the one hand, I have a strict view of Article II, the president decides and the senate gets to advice and consent. This view would trash the blue slip and all other nomination practices that have developed over the years (like only a westerner can be secretary of the Interior or having a black or minority HUD secretary).
On the other hand (the side I lean more toward), is a game of simple probability. Because of the senate’s (im)famous malapportionment, Republicans will be in control about 80% of the time to Dems’ 20%. If this holds up through the years, Republicans will obviously benefit from the lack of a blue slip veto vastly more often than Dems.
The place where I draw the line is unilateral disarmament. Once the GOP change the rules to benefit themselves, there should be NO going back when Dems manage to regain control.
—
@Joe, you really believe that Graham would vote in a way to let Dale Ho, Nancy Abudo, and Rachel Bloomekatz favorably advance tomorrow? If only your rock-rib optimism was infectious…
LikeLike
Not particularly Gavi, but I feel pretty confident that everyone except Ho, Abudu, Rikelman, RB, Kato,Clarke, and Vera will got voted out. That at least gets us 18/25.
I think there’s a fighting chance he may vote present on Vera and Clarke too since they were voted out in the previous Congress. The other five are likely a bridge too far but we’ll see.
LikeLike
Oh, I see. I agree.
I thought you meant that you think he would vote in a way to advance those particular nominees, not the others he’s already supported (by proxy).
Also, still no organizing resolution last night. The senate gavels in this morning at 10, same time as the SJC business meeting.
LikeLike
I think the issue with blue slips for district court judges is that it does allow Republicans to block seats until a Republican is back in the WH but in the same breath, Democrats did the same thing under Trump, including with the Wisconsin seat that Baldwin and Johnson have been battling over for the past few years.
The guy Johnson wanted confirmed was a horrible anti-LGBT bigot but due to Baldwin not returning her blue slip, his nomination was blocked.
In NY and California, we’ve gotten some meh nominees but some outstanding ones as well, something that wouldn’t have been possible if the blue slip rule is gone.
In the same breath, at some point something has to be done, the question is who pulls the trigger first?
LikeLike
Maybe a compromise is get rid of the blue slip and force judges to be more strategic about their retirement/resignation? That way voluntary vacancies are filled by the intended party in power. Death vacancies are “freebies” for lack of a better term. This would all but eliminate putting old people on the bench! And thank goodness.
LikeLike