Three Republicans, all lawyers, join Senate Judiciary Committee
Published in News & Features
Republicans have added three new members to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which covers a range of high-profile topics such as immigration and handles nominations for trial judges and Justice Department officials.
Sens. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Katie Britt of Alabama and Michael D. Crapo of Idaho are the new additions to the Judiciary Committee, part of a roster that will give Republicans a 12-10 edge over Democrats.
It’s a wider gap than the 11-10 split that Democrats had on the panel in the 118th Congress. Yet, Democrats still largely avoided trouble when it came to advancing President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees.
All three of the new Republican members on the panel are lawyers.
Britt is a former Senate staffer and as a lawmaker has served on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Justice Department, the FBI and other federal law enforcement entities.
Britt, in a statement, said she’s looking forward to using the committee post to work with President-elect Donald Trump to “end the border crisis and strengthen immigration enforcement across our nation’s interior.”
“The Judiciary Committee is an opportunity to do more to secure our border and make our country safe again for hardworking families,” Britt said.
Britt also said she’s committed to making sure “America’s judicial system is run by those who faithfully interpret the law, rather than leftwing activist judges seeking to legislate from the bench.”
Schmitt is a former Missouri attorney general and said in a statement that he’s ready to “take on the tough fights that include confirming judges who decide cases based on what the law is, not what they want it to be.”
Schmitt also said he’s looking forward to making sure the Justice Department and other law enforcement entities “refocus on cracking down on violent crime.”
On the Democratic side will be Sen. Adam B. Schiff, who started his first full Senate term earlier this year. The California Democrat, who could act as a foil to conservative members, has been the subject of criticism from conservatives over his role in the first Trump impeachment effort and his spot on the now-disbanded House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Leaving the panel are Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Jon Ossoff, D-Ga.
The most immediate work for the committee will likely be to hold confirmation hearings for Trump’s picks for the Justice Department, including Pam Bondi, whom the president-elect has selected as his next attorney general.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the 91-year-old Iowa Republican who will lead the committee this Congress, last year said the panel would move “swiftly” to consider Bondi when the new Congress convenes.
But Grassley, during a TV interview posted Friday, flagged potential trouble with scheduling a confirmation hearing.
“There’s one thing that can speed up her nomination, and that is if the transition team that we’re working with of the new Trump administration would get the background investigations and the other paper, particularly the ethics reports, that we ought to have,” Grassley said. “We don’t have any of that paper yet.”
Grassley said he wanted the information so he could schedule a hearing for Jan. 14.
As of Tuesday morning, Grassley’s office had not announced a confirmation hearing date for Bondi. Grassley’s office did not respond to a request regarding whether lawmakers had received a background investigation on Bondi.
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