{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov//public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=2F9204CD-ACE2-4C83-A860-BF106AA38198", "McConnell: I Applaud Chairman Grassley For Not Allowing Blue Slip Courtesy To Be Abused", "2017-11-29", "2017", "2017-11", "Republican", "House", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding more of the president\u2019s well-qualified judicial nominees and Senate Democrats\u2019 abuse of the blue slip courtesy in the consideration process:\r\n\r\n\u201cOur colleague Senator Grassley has done an outstanding job processing the president\u2019s judicial nominees, beginning with the president\u2019s selection of Judge Neil Gorsuch to serve on the Supreme Court. Chairman Grassley and the members of the Judiciary Committee continue their important work today as the committee holds a hearing for three more of the president\u2019s judicial nominees, including two well-qualified nominees to our circuit courts, Justice David Stras and Mr. Stuart Kyle Duncan.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Committee\u2019s hearing today is particularly important because it means that one member of this body \u2013 in this case, the junior Senator from Minnesota \u2013 cannot single-handedly block the committee from considering an extraordinarily well-qualified nominee to serve on our circuit courts. That nominee is Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras.\r\n\r\n\u201cJustice Stras is an impressively qualified and widely admired member of Minnesota\u2019s highest court. He was raised by a single mother and is the grandson of a survivor of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Justice Stras graduated first in his class from the University of Kansas Law School. He has clerked on the court of appeals and the United States Supreme Court.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe worked for several years in private practice until he joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School. He was appointed to the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2010, and in 2012, Minnesota voters elected him to a full term on their highest court. His reputation in the Minnesota legal community is impeccable. It is no wonder the American Bar Association, hardly a right-wing organization, gave him its highest rating, unanimously well qualified.\r\n\r\n\u201cNevertheless, the junior Senator from Minnesota does not support Justice Stras receiving so much as a hearing. That approach is untenable in light of the recent actions of our Democratic colleagues. A little more than four years ago, they eliminated the supermajority requirement for ending debate on lower court nominees. They did so, they said, because they believed that a minority of the Senate should not be able to prevent the confirmation of a nominee who enjoyed the support of a majority of this body.\r\n\r\n\u201cPerhaps our Democratic colleagues now feel buyer\u2019s remorse over the change to Senate Rules they jammed through this body. But they should not be allowed to use the committee\u2019s blue slip courtesy \u2013 which is neither a committee rule, nor a Senate Rule \u2013 as another way to block the consideration of nominees with majority support.\r\n\r\n\u201cAs Chairman Grassley has pointed out, that approach is not the way the blue slip courtesy was first used, nor is it the way the vast majority of Judiciary Committee Chairmen have used it. And after Senate Democrats changed the Senate\u2019s Rules to prevent 41 Senators from stopping a nominee, our Democratic colleagues cannot now think it is tenable to give just one Senator absolute power, via the blue slip, to do so.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn this case, the junior Senator from Minnesota acknowledges that it is \u2018undeniably true\u2019 that Justice Stras is a \u2018committed public servant whose tenure as a professor at the University of Minnesota underscores just how much he cares about the law.\u2019 Yet our colleague objects to the committee even considering his nomination.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy does he want to block a widely respected and accomplished state Supreme Court justice from his own state whom his constituents support? Because our colleague doesn\u2019t agree with the United States Supreme Court Justices whom the nominee admires, one of whom the nominee happened to clerk for. I applaud Chairman Grassley for not allowing the blue slip courtesy to be abused in this fashion, and I look forward to learning more about Justice Stras\u2019s views from today\u2019s hearing.\u201d\r\n\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov//public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=2F9204CD-ACE2-4C83-A860-BF106AA38198"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8500081021338701, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}