A Republican senator has scuttled a deal between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the White House to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer to a federal court seat.
President Joe Biden angered some in his party when he agreed to nominate Chad Meredith to the bench for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. However, the president was bailed out when the plan fell apart after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he wouldn’t offer a blue slip to confirm Meredith.
“In considering potential district court nominees, the White House learned that Sen. Rand Paul will not return a blue slip on Chad Meredith,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Friday in a statement, according to the New York Times. “Therefore, the White House will not nominate Mr. Meredith.”
WHITE HOUSE DECLINES TO ADVANCE ANTI-ABORTION JUDGE IN LATEST ROUND OF NOMINATIONS
The rejection undermines McConnell’s long-standing effort to shape the federal judiciary into a conservative juggernaut. The GOP leader infamously infuriated Democrats by holding open a seat on the Supreme Court during President Barack Obama’s final months in the White House, eventually handing President Donald Trump three bites at the Supreme Court justice nominee apple.
Biden was prepared to hand McConnell a win on the nominee after the senator argued the president wasn’t giving away a seat but was instead replacing one Republican with another, according to the outlet.
McConnell blasted Paul’s effort to thwart the nomination in an interview with the New York Times.
“The net result of this is it has prevented me from getting my kind of judge out of a liberal Democratic president,” McConnell said before calling Paul’s position “just utterly pointless.”
Paul hasn’t said why he declined to support Meredith’s nomination, and his office has not responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
The deal between McConnell and Meredith was unpopular with several Democrats, as Meredith played a key role in fighting to keep Kentucky’s abortion restrictions in place after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said earlier this week that he does “not think this is the kind of person that a Democratic majority should put on the bench.”
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Trump’s calling card for support in 2016 was his promise to appoint staunch conservative judges to the bench. And McConnell, who didn’t always see eye to eye with the president, was happy to facilitate what might become the most lasting feature of the Trump administration.
As prolific as Trump and McConnell were in appointing federal judges — the duo appointed 54 federal appellate judges in four years, one fewer than Obama appointed in eight, and a total of 226 federal appeals court judges while Trump was in office — Biden has been on an impressive run as well. As of May 1, the Senate had confirmed 60 federal judges Biden nominated, the most ever through that point in time for a president.
