It was nearly four months ago when Sen. J.D. Vance announced his intention to block Justice Department nominees. It’s not that the Ohio Republican had a problem with the individuals’ qualifications, but rather, the senator said he was doing this to protest Donald Trump’s indictments.
“I think that we have to grind this department to a halt,” Vance said, referring to federal law enforcement.
Some hoped that the rookie senator would eventually settle down and take a more responsible approach. As The New Republic noted yesterday, that hasn’t yet happened. Two qualified U.S. attorney nominees came to the floor; Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin tried to confirm them by way of unanimous consent; and Vance balked.
“I object to this because we are living in a banana republic where the president is using his Department of Justice to go after his chief political rival, the person he will appear on the ballot with, in about a year,” Vance said on Wednesday. … “If the Department of Justice will use these nominations for law instead of politics, I am happy to end this whole policy,” Vance added.
The GOP lawmaker didn’t have anything meaningful to say about the nominees themselves — Ohio’s Rebecca Lutzko and Illinois’ April Perry — just as Vance didn’t have especially good reasons to stand in the way of other nominated U.S. attorneys.
“On five previous occasions, I’ve come to the floor of the Senate to request unanimous consent to move these nominees forward. Each time, the junior senator from Ohio has objected,” Durbin said after the Republican’s move. “He campaigned for the Senate claiming he would be ‘tough on crime,’ but now that he’s here, he proudly brags that he wants to ‘grind the Department of Justice to a halt.’ These communities desperately need these nominees in place.”
As we’ve discussed, procedural tactics like these are not uncommon in the chamber, though members usually take such steps in pursuit of specific goals. If a senator is frustrated that the Department of the Commerce, for example, hasn’t provided him or her with a sought-after report, a member might temporarily delay departmental nominees until the document is sent to Capitol Hill.
The practice, in other words, tends to be goal-oriented.
But that’s what makes Vance’s efforts so notable: He appears to be engaged in a partisan tantrum with no real purpose.








