# Chuck Grassley **Charles Ernest "Chuck" Grassley** (b. September 17, 1933) is the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senator, representing Iowa since 1981. He chairs the [[Senate Judiciary Committee]] in the 119th Congress (2025–2027), having previously chaired it during the 115th Congress (2017–2019). His chairmanship is the institutional continuity through which the [[Federalist Society]]'s judicial selection pipeline operates — Grassley shepherded the confirmations of [[Neil Gorsuch]] and [[Brett Kavanaugh]] during his first chairmanship, and is now overseeing the second Trump-term judicial wave. Grassley's procedural choices as Judiciary chair have systematically accelerated the pace of judicial confirmations: reducing hearing time per nominee, scheduling multiple nominees in the same session, advancing circuit-court nominees over withheld home-state [[Blue Slip]]s in 2017–18 (the practice Lindsey Graham then made formal policy in 2019), and coordinating with majority leadership to schedule floor votes immediately after committee approval. The cumulative effect is a confirmation pipeline that operates at unprecedented speed compared to earlier eras. His most consequential action was an **inaction**: in 2016, working with then-Majority Leader [[Mitch McConnell]], Grassley refused to hold any Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominee [[Merrick Garland]] for 293 days, effectively stealing a Supreme Court seat that was then filled by Neil Gorsuch in 2017. The same posture was reversed in 2020 when the committee held expedited hearings for [[Amy Coney Barrett]] eight days before the presidential election — the mirror-image scenario. ## Background A farmer from New Hartford, Iowa, Grassley served in the Iowa House (1959–1975) and the U.S. House (1975–1981) before winning his Senate seat in 1980. He has been Senate President pro tempore since January 2025 — third in the line of succession, see [[Continuity of Government Structure]] — and previously held the post in 2019–2021. His pre-Judiciary brand was oversight: whistleblower protection (the 1986 False Claims Act amendments), inspector-general independence ([[Inspector General]]), and investigations of tax-exempt ministries — the probes that produced the [[Kenneth Copeland]] and [[Creflo Dollar]] pages here. He also chaired the Finance Committee and remains the Senate's principal voice on farm policy and ethanol. ## The 2025 blue-slip fight Grassley's institutionalism and his Trump alignment collided in the summer of 2025. For district-court judges and U.S. attorneys he continued to honor the [[Blue Slip]] — the home-state senators' veto — which meant Democratic senators could block nominees such as Alina Habba (D.N.J.) and Jay Clayton (S.D.N.Y.). On July 29, 2025 Trump publicly demanded he end the practice, calling it "stupid and outdated"; Grassley said he was "offended" and "disappointed" but did not change the policy, which his office described as "a traditional approach ... mirroring the application the vast majority of Judiciary chairmen have used over the past century." The episode is the clearest limit so far on how far the chair will bend: he will run the [[Confirmation Pipeline]] at speed, but not abolish the one procedural check that protects senators' own prerogatives. The effect of that choice on the 2026 vacancy picture is mapped in [[How a Nominee Becomes a Federal Judge]]. ## The Blanche confirmation (2026) As chair, Grassley moved [[Todd Blanche]]'s attorney-general nomination through committee and to the floor, where it passed 50–49 on August 8, 2026 — his public case was that Blanche was "a tough, fair prosecutor dedicated to the rule of law." The vote is the bookend to the Garland blockade: the chairman who would not hold a hearing for one attorney general in 2016 delivered the narrowest possible confirmation for the president's former defense lawyer a decade later. ## Notable Quotes - [[Chuck Grassley - a tough fair prosecutor dedicated to the rule of law]] — on the Blanche confirmation ## See Also - [[Senate Judiciary Committee]] — the committee he chairs - [[Federalist Society]] — the network whose nominees he advances - [[Mitch McConnell]] — partner in the 2016 Garland blockade - [[Merrick Garland]] — the precedent - [[Supreme Court of the United States]] — the destination of the pipeline he manages