Senate Democrats slam move to block ABA from vetting judicial nominees

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Courthouse News Service

May 30, 2025


WASHINGTON (CN) — The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee took aim at the Justice Department on Friday, slamming Attorney General Pam Bondi’s steps to hamstring the American Bar Association’s longstanding practice of rating White House judicial appointments as a “seismic” shift in the nomination process.

Bondi, who has called the country’s leading legal professional association an “activist” group and accused it of favoring Democrats, went after the ABA just a week before the Senate is expected to examine the Donald Trump administration’s first set of court nominees. In a letter to Bar Association president William Bay, the attorney general claimed that the organization “no longer functions as a fair arbiter” of judicial nominees or their qualifications. “The ABA’s steadfast refusal to fix the bias in its ratings process, despite criticism from Congress, the Administration, and the academy, is disquieting,” Bondi added.

In response, the Justice Department said that its Office of Legal Counsel will no longer instruct court nominees to allow the Bar Association access to non-public information such as bar records. Further, nominees will no longer respond to ABA questionnaires or sit for interviews with the organization, the attorney general told Bay. A source familiar with the letter told Courthouse News that the Bar Association was aware of it but had not received any official correspondence from the Justice Department. Bondi posted the letter to on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday afternoon.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted the move in a statement Friday, pointing out that stripping the Bar Association of its access to nominees upends a decades-old practice in place under both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations.

Read more: https://www.courthousenews.com/senate-democrats-slam-move-to-block-aba-from-vetting-judicial-nominees/

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Bondi Eliminates ABA's Role in Vetting Trump Judicial Picks

The ABA has historically played an important role in vetting judges

Link to tweet

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/bondi-eliminates-abas-role-in-vetting-trump-judicial-nominees

The Justice Department won’t allow the American Bar Association to vet President Donald Trump’s picks for judicial appointments.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, which prepares judicial nominees, will no longer “direct nominees to provide waivers allowing the ABA access to non-public information, including bar records,” according to the Thursday letter. Nominees also won’t respond to ABA questionnaires or sit for interviews with the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.

“Unfortunately, the ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a Thursday letter to ABA President William Bay.

The changes represent a further diminishment of the ABA’s customary role in vetting judicial nominations, which had already shrank during several prior administrations. Trump, like George W. Bush before him, had cut off the ABA’s ability to vet candidates before they were nominated, a practice Joe Biden continued.

The ABA’s standing committee, which is independent from the larger organization, is a 15-member panel that’s helped vet judicial nominees since the Eisenhower era. Its members, including the chairman, are appointed by the association’s president to three-year terms. The ranks have included trial attorneys, law professors, and Big Law partners.

Lawyers under consideration are rated as “not qualified,” “qualified,” or “well qualified.”

I wonder which of trump's nominees know that they would fail this vetting

[Wiz Imp]

2. The only reason to do this is because they know that all Trump nominees for Judge positions would get rated by the ABA

as NOT QUALIFIED. Up until this point, very few nominees have ever gotten the NOT QUALIFIED rating (I think all have been under Republican Presidents), but there is no doubt that is the exact type of person they want to appoint in every instance moving forward - corrupt, unethical and poor knowledge of the law are the qualities Trump is looking for.