Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley is starting talks with the White House about moving judicial nominees through his committee.
“The only discussion I’ve had is the process,” the Iowa Republican said in an interview this week. “Just with the White House Counsel.”
The update, however preliminary, signals the start of President Donald Trump’s relaunched efforts to transform the courts. Confirming hundreds of judges — including three Supreme Court justices — was a marquee achievement of Trump’s first term that is poised to leave the federal judiciary with a conservative slant for decades.
This time around, there aren’t many slots for Trump to fill: There are just 43 total vacancies in the federal judiciary, according to a database kept by the U.S. Court system.
Still, the White House is facing a series of roadblocks from judges confirmed in the Biden era, who are set on halting the administration’s unilateral moves to freeze funding and shut down agencies. And Trump needs all the sympathetic judges he can get.
As Grassley prepares to process judicial nominees through his panel, he’ll also be working with a critical ally: The White House has also recruited Steve Kenny, a former Grassley staffer and senior counsel at the Republican National Committee, as deputy counsel for nominations, according to a person with knowledge of the hire, granted anonymity to share personnel decisions that have not yet been formally announced. In that role, Kenny would be the lead liaison between the Judiciary Committee and the Trump administration as judges are nominated and sent to the Senate for confirmation hearings and votes.
Kenny was most recently a senior counsel for the Republican National Committee, but he was a counsel to Grassley during the lawmaker’s last time serving as chair of the Judiciary Committee between 2017 and 2019.
