It’s Time to Ditch the Blue Slip: Oversight Project Statement on Senate’s Abysmal U.S. Attorney Confirmation Pace
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 19, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Oversight Project calls on the United States Senate to end the “blue slip” process and confirm President Trump’s United States Attorney nominees. To date, the Senate has confirmed only 18 of 50 nominated U.S. Attorneys to fill 93 offices throughout the country. The refusal of the Senate to fill U.S. Attorney slots with President Trump’s nominees has undermined the Administration’s law and order agenda. Deep state, Biden-era prosecutors now head many of these offices while the Senate sits on its hands. Many nominees have stalled, or not even been considered, because the home state senators have refused to return a “blue slip” for the nominee.
The “blue slip” process allows home state senators to effectively veto the President’s nominees for positions in their state. If a senator refuses to return a blue slip for a nominee, the nomination will not even be considered. The practice started in the Senate over 100 years ago. It has no basis in the Constitution, laws, or rules of the Senate. This “tradition” has morphed into a mechanism where Republican Senators avoid accountability for taking tough votes.
It is an arcane practice from a bygone era, and it needs to go.
Mike Howell, President of the Oversight Project offered the following quote:
“Republican Senators’ insistence on refusing to implement President Trump’s agenda isn’t about some institutional tradition, it’s about hiding from the voters. The blue-slip allows them to kill nominees privately instead of publicly. The result is that they will prevent the Trump Administration from taking full operational control of the Department of Justice, and that is the entire point. It’s time to call them out for this.”
Read More: Mike Howell in The Blaze: The ‘blue-slip block’ is GOP cowardice masquerading as tradition
The Oversight Project prepared the data for this release prior to the Senate’s confirmation of 13 additional U.S. Attorneys during the night of December 18. The total confirmed U.S. Attorneys currently sits at 31. The overwhelming majority of the U.S. Attorneys confirmed by the Senate hail from states with two Republican senators, underscoring the need to remove the blue slip.