The Senate Judiciary Committee had only met once until this week to vote on President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees in the two months that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has been absent from the Senate.
The meetings are usually held on Thursdays but have been skipped or canceled for weeks at a time as Feinstein recovers from shingles at home in California.
FEINSTEIN ABSENCE RACHETS UP SENATE TENSIONS OVER BIDEN JUDICIAL NOMINEES
Feinstein’s absence has left Democrats unable to move judges without Republican support, creating a logjam on the committee that has led to growing pressure for her to resign.
She proposed that another Democrat replace her on the panel temporarily while she recovers, but Republicans, who have little appetite to help Democrats advance liberal judges, blocked that move on Tuesday.
With the effort torpedoed, Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) made clear this week he is moving on without her.
The Judiciary Committee held its first markup hearing in six weeks on Thursday, scheduling 12 district court nominees for consideration.
Durbin opened the meeting wishing Feinstein a “speedy recovery,” but the markup amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that the 89-year-old senator may not be returning anytime soon.
The committee voted to advance seven nominees, its first judicial votes since March 9, and Durbin announced it “will continue to call and vote on these nominations” in her absence.
The chairman confirmed to the Washington Examiner after the hearing that Senate Democrats are trying to chart a path forward without Feinstein as they focus on moving judges that can attract bipartisan support.
Each of the nominees received at least one Republican vote.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) told reporters that Thursday’s hearing shows “we can have bipartisan support for our nominees.”
But divisions over several judges, whose votes were pushed to another week, underscore the limitations of what Democrats can do without Feinstein in Washington.
Republicans are expected to oppose Charnelle Bjelkengren and Kato Crews, district court nominees who floundered under questioning by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) at their confirmation hearings.
Bjelkengren could not answer what the different articles of the Constitution say, while Crews could not define a “Brady motion,” a tenet of criminal law.
But even Democrats may not be united behind lawyer Michael Delaney, a third nominee whose nomination was delayed on Thursday. Senators have raised concerns over his handling of a 2015 case in which he requested that an underage sexual assault victim’s identity be unmasked if the suit went to trial.
Hirono declined to tell the Washington Examiner how she will vote.
Kennedy said that while he will oppose nominees who have “no business being on the federal bench” — he quipped that some appear to have gotten their “law license with a happy meal at McDonald’s” — he argued that the seven judges advancing on Thursday demonstrates that Feinstein is not an obstacle to the committee’s work.
“We have plenty of work to do on the Judiciary Committee,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Nothing that Sen. Feinstein is doing or not doing is impeding the progress of the Judiciary Committee.”
It’s an argument Republicans have been making for weeks — that most nominees Biden has put forward can attract bipartisan support and the pressure campaign to “sideline” Feinstein is predicated on the false premise that the committee can’t function without her.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) pointed to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) reputation as a bipartisan vote on the committee to make that case. Graham cast the lone Republican vote for three of the seven nominees on Thursday.
“The overwhelming majority of judicial nominees get bipartisan support because Lindsey votes for them,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Democrats are willing to discard Feinstein’s decades of service in the Senate in order to ram through a handful of the most extreme and the least qualified nominees who are so bad that they couldn’t get even a single Republican vote on the nominees that they’re desperate to move forward.”
Cruz noted that some of former President Donald Trump’s nominees weren’t “up to snuff” but argued Democrats aren’t pushing back hard enough on the White House’s selections.
Hirono acknowledged that Democrats may run into some of the same problems they’re having in committee when certain nominees come before the full Senate. About two dozen have made it through the panel but have yet to come up for a vote.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
But she expressed optimism that Biden’s nominees will continue to attract GOP votes.
“We don’t have all of the Democrats. That’s why we can’t move them all,” she said. “But we can move a significant number of them, and I hope the Republicans will see their way to doing more of that kind of bipartisan support for our nominees.”
“I remain hopeful,” she added.
