Judiciary Committee advances more of Trump’s judicial nominees to the Senate floor
One nominee received votes from three Democrats on the committee.
On Thursday morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance three more of Trump’s lifetime judicial nominees — Katie Lane for the District of Montana, Sheria Clarke for the District of South Carolina, and Kara Westercamp for the Court of International Trade — in addition to the nomination of Evan Rikhye for the District of the Virgin Islands, which is an Article IV territorial court.
Lane, Westercamp, and Rikhye received party-line votes (12-10), while Clarke advanced (15-7) with Senators Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Chris Coons voting with all Republicans on the committee. During their confirmation hearing and in responses to written questions for the record, all four of these nominees refused to say that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and dodged questions related to January 6, 2021.
District of Kansas nominees Jeffrey Kuhlman, Tony Mattivi, and Tony Powell, in addition to Eighth Circuit nominee Justin Smith, were held over and should receive committee votes on Thursday, May 14, following the Senate’s scheduled recess next week. Earlier this week, I wrote about how these four nominees responded to written questions for the record.
Katie Lane’s ABA rating
Chair Chuck Grassley used his opening remarks during today’s markup to trash the American Bar Association (ABA), whose Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary rated Katie Lane as Not Qualified earlier this month. Senator Grassley accused the ABA of inserting itself into “divisive political topics” and said that its evaluation process “lacks transparency” and is biased against conservative nominees. Despite her astonishing lack of experience, Senator Grassley called Lane a “great nominee” and said that “Once confirmed, I hope Ms. Lane wears her ABA rating as a badge of honor. Based on the history of stellar judges who have received poor ABA ratings, she’s likely to become one of the nation’s finest jurists.”
Last June, after then-Attorney General Pam Bondi eliminated the DOJ’s cooperation with the ABA, the organization’s president William R. Bay rebutted Bondi’s assertion that the ABA is an “activist organization” that “invariably and demonstrably” favors judicial nominees named by Democratic presidents. He provided data to the contrary in his letter, which Senator Grassley, of course, did not mention in his remarks.
In his opening statement this morning, Ranking Member Dick Durbin noted that there are 3,603 licensed attorneys in Montana. “When you look at the person who has been nominated to serve a lifetime appointment to the federal district court in Montana, you wonder: Couldn’t the White House find one attorney in Montana to recommend for a lifetime appointment who has actually tried a case before a court? Kathleen Lane is not remotely qualified to be a district judge.”
Senator Durbin referenced the ABA’s letter, noting that Lane has failed to gain “substantial courtroom and trial experience in the less than nine years since she was admitted to the bar.” The letter goes on to say:
Ms. Lane has less than eight years of experience in the trial courts and less than seven years as a litigator. Ms. Lane has never tried a case as lead counsel, whether civil or criminal. Her trial experience consists of serving as fourth-chair counsel in a bench trial in 2025, where she briefly cross-examined one witness. She has first-chaired only one deposition. Although Ms. Lane has argued two cases in the federal courts of appeals, it appears she has never conducted a direct examination, picked a jury, or offered an opening statement or a closing argument.
“My Republican colleagues may claim ABA is partisan, but over the past year the ABA has rated dozens of Trump nominees as qualified and well qualified,” Senator Durbin said. “Not only has Ms. Lane’s legal career been short, it’s been extremely, almost exclusively partisan. She currently works for the Republican National committee. She doesn’t try cases, but she works for the RNC. She has repeatedly chosen to litigate politically charged issues. The record shows she’s ideological and inexperienced. To think: 3,603 licensed attorneys in Montana, and this is the best we can get for a lifetime appointment.”
Kara Westercamp’s partisanship and extremism
During last month’s hearing, Westercamp’s disturbing history of posting and amplifying biased political content was highlighted at length, with Senator Durbin explaining at the time that “what we’re trying to get to is whether you have the temperament for a lifetime appointment as a judge with extraordinary authority and power in that appointment.” In written questions for the record, senators asked many additional questions about Westercamp’s tweets, and Senator Durbin referenced some of them again at today’s markup. As he said:
Kara Westercamp was selected for a singular purpose: Her faithfulness to the White House, not the rule of law. Her offensive, inflammatory social media posts demonstrate she lacks the temperament to sit on the bench. On her now-deactivated Twitter account, Ms. Westercamp spread conspiracy theories about the January 6 insurrection and attacked Republicans and Democrats alike for being insufficiently loyal to President Trump. She elevated claims that the January 6 attack was “orchestrated by the members of the Senate and members of the Capitol Police.” She dismissed the entire event with a post stating “We’re all supposed to be sending thoughts and prayers to traumatized members of Congress whose workday was interrupted for a couple hours.”
Senator Durbin detailed appalling statements she’s made about Senators McConnell, Graham, and Collins, in addition to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Ms. Westercamp clearly lacks the temperament to serve on the bench as a judge. I will not support her nomination,” he said.
Senator Grassley chimed in, saying he wanted to “defend his fellow Iowan.” He referenced three Biden nominees — all people of color, and all brilliant civil rights lawyers — who he claimed “made inflammatory partisan statements, criticized members of this committee, and were members of openly partisan organizations.” (Note: I previously worked for one of those three lawyers at a nonprofit civil rights organization, which was nonpartisan). It’s not difficult to imagine why Senator Grassley chose to highlight those three nominees in particular.
The “slo-mo self-destruction” of the committee
While senators were still gathering in the room, Senator Whitehouse spoke for more than seven minutes, saying that “When we give up the circuit court blue slip, if we continue to give up any role in US Attorney nominations, and if we let witnesses come in and just make up privileges and not have to answer questions, that is slo-mo self-destruction of this committee, and we all pay a price.”
During Trump’s first term, Chair Grassley abandoned blue slips for circuit court nominees — meaning that, before proceeding with a confirmation hearing, a home-state senator no longer had to approve nominees who were named to circuit court seats designated to their state. While blue slips for district court nominees remain in place, this new practice for circuit court nominees has persisted.
“I know that created an immediate political advantage for the Republican side in order to be able to shove circuit court nominees into Democrat seats, but then the winds changed. And the next thing you know, Republicans are looking around for a blue slip and finding that: Oh no, we killed it,” Senator Whitehouse said this morning. “The net result, as the politics balance out, is that we transferred our power on this committee, individual senators’ power on this committee, to the executive branch.
And we’ve never gotten it back. We just gave it away.”
Senator Whitehouse also decried what is happening with US Attorney appointments, saying:
This Department of Justice has figured out a device for circumventing this committee entirely. It’s not a question of us not having a blue slip. They have figured out a way to put US Attorneys in place without the individual’s name ever coming before this committee. The trick is, you appoint somebody in interim, and then when the time gets ready to run out, you can the first assistant, and you put your interim into the first assistant position, and then you designate that individual as something called a special attorney — and that’s it. According to the Department of Justice, that individual now has all the powers of the US Attorney, and this committee has never even had a role in looking at that. Now, if you all are happy with that, if you want to have the new rule for US Attorneys be that you get to put them in without even touching base with this committee, without even having a conversation with the senator from the home state? If that’s what you want this to be, keep it up. But when the time comes, when the winds shift, and suddenly it’s your US Attorneys who are being selected by an administration, without even consultation with you, without any committee process or review whatsoever, then don’t come complaining to me.
Senator Whitehouse said the other “self-destruction” that he sees occurring in the Judiciary Committee is that “we don’t require witnesses to answer questions. Instead, we allow them to assert privileges that are preposterous. And we just let it pass.” He cited Chair Grassley’s previous statements about the limited nature of executive privilege and those privileges not limiting Congress’ constitutional oversight power.
In response, Chair Grassley said that he wouldn’t try to refute anything Senator Whitehouse said, but he did say that he’d be continuing the blue slip process that he created during the first Trump administration and that remained in place during President Biden’s administration. Oddly, he provided examples of US Attorney nominees — from states with Democratic senators — who had blue slips returned, saying that “I think the way this really works in the states where it has worked is that the senators have encouraged cooperation with the White House and been in communication with the White House.” His comments were not responsive to Senator Whitehouse’s concerns, ignored what is happening with other US Attorney positions, and overlooked the difficulty of working with the current White House on nominations.
The weaponization of the Justice Department
Senator Durbin also spoke about Pam Bondi, saying “she did more damage to the Justice Department’s reputation than any attorney general in history.” According to Senator Durbin, “Bondi transformed the department from the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency into a weaponized political battleground, providing a shield to protect the president and his cronies and a sword to attack his enemies. But this was ultimately her undoing.”
Senator Durbin slammed Bondi’s replacement, Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche, who “is doing everything in his power to placate his former client.” As Senator Durbin noted:
Earlier this month, the Justice Department moved to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of members of the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers for their key roles in leading the January 6 insurrection. The president has a determined strategy to wipe off the face of the earth all evidence of what happened in this complex on January 6. It won’t work. Those violent extremists helped organize the violent assault on law enforcement in the Capitol building — an attempt to forcibly block the constitutional transfer of presidential power. We have witnesses who come before this committee who can’t answer — won’t answer — the question of who won the 2020 presidential election. They also gloss over January 6 as not worthy of comment. It was a moment I’ll never forget as a person who served in the Senate and the House. This Capitol building represents more than just a building. It is a symbol of our democracy. It was physically, violently attacked, and the men and women who risked their lives, and some gave their lives, in defense of this Capitol, deserve better than what we’ve seen from this administration.
Senator Durbin also called out the DOJ’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that he said “has worked tirelessly to expose violent extremists like the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers — the same people Todd Blanche wants to give a clean slate.” He also criticized the second indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, saying “I’m confident Todd Blanche’s vindictive efforts will ultimately fail again, just like Pam Bondi’s baseless prosecution of one of the president’s enemies.”
Finally, Senator Durbin blasted the DOJ’s attacks on Dreamers and those protected by DACA — young immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Last week, the DOJ issued what Senator Durbin called a “shocking decision that puts Dreamers at risk of being swept up in the president’s cruel, mass deportation campaign.” And he pleaded with Chair Grassley to take action:
Mr. Chairman, this committee has the authority, the jurisdiction, and the responsibility to review this management of the immigration issue and to do something. I ask you, when you consider the schedule of hearings and the subject matter, we need to schedule soon — very soon — a hearing on the status of DACA and Dreamers in America. Thousands of lives are at stake. I also ask you to schedule a markup vote of S. 3348, the bipartisan Dream Act that I’ve introduced. This legislation, which has been referred to our committee, would establish a path to citizenship for Dreamers.
Lane, Clarke, Westercamp, and Rikhye are now the only judicial nominees pending on the Senate floor and could be confirmed as soon as the week of May 11.