This Week in the Senate: 2/11/2019

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Although no judicial nominations are making their way forward on the floor right now, the Senate is holding three hearings related to judges this week.

First, the Judiciary Committee meets today to hear from five judicial nominees. They are:

Court of Appeals:
  1. Judge Joseph Bianco, who is currently on the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn and Long Island) bench, for the Second Circuit
  2. Michael Park of Consovoy McCarthy Park for the Second Circuit
District Courts:
  1. Justice Greg Guidry of the Louisiana Supreme Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana
  2. Michael Liburdi, a former counsel to Governor of Arizona Doug Ducey and current partner at Greenberg Traurig, for the District of Arizona
  3. Peter D. Welte, a former Grand Forks County State’s Attorney and current partner at the Vogel Law Firm, for the District of North Dakota
Some notes:
  • Neither Bianco nor Park have blue slips returned from either Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer or Senator (and presidential candidate) Kirsten Gillibrand. The war on blue slips is about to ramp up.
  • Liburdi’s nomination is moving ahead relatively swiftly, indicating that Senator Kyrsten Sinema both returned her blue slip without haste and also is not posing much of an obstacle to the White House, judges-wise. It's also notable that he received a straight "qualified" rating from the ABA.
  • Guidry and Welte both are from states with two Republican senators, indicating that Chairman Lindsey Graham might be prioritizing nominees supported by his party’s senators (this has typically been standard practice) ahead of candidates from blue states who were nominated earlier.
The Senate Rules Committee is also meeting today to take up a resolution that changes the maximum amount of postcloture time for certain nominations, including reducing debate time for district court and Court of Federal Claims nominees from thirty hours to two hours. This would greatly speed up Republicans’ efforts to confirm judges and thus will draw significant opposition from Democrats (despite a resolution of similar wording and effect passing with bipartisan support in 2013). I'll go into more detail about this rule change in the near future.

Tomorrow, the Judiciary Committee is meeting in executive session to consider nominees from last week's hearing, including D.C. Circuit nominee Neomi Rao, who is currently the Administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (the "regulation czar"), and two nominees to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board: Aditya Bamzai (R) and Travis LeBlanc (D). These nominees will be held over officially for a week, and as the Senate is in recess for Washington's birthday next week, they will likely be reported on February 28, adding to the 44 nominees already pending on the floor. Judging by Rao's confirmation tally to OIRA, her eventual confirmation to the D.C. Circuit will be on roughly party lines.

On the floor, the body is voting on a public lands package, along with voting to confirm Attorney General nominee William Barr, and is working to pass an appropriations bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies open past the approaching funding gap on Friday.

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