President Trump named Ed Martin the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia on January 20, 2025. The clock started ticking immediately on Martin being able to serve without Senate approval. The clock is about to run out.
If an interim U.S. Attorney is not confirmed by the United States Senate within 120 days of the appointment, the district court of the area in which the U.S. Attorney works will pick the next interim attorney. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia is presided over by Judge James Boasberg, a judge you might have heard of. He’ll get an extraordinary say in the matter.
The alternative is for President Trump to name a new interim U.S. Attorney before the one-hundred-twenty-day term for Martin. Replacing Martin with a new pick extends the time for Senate consideration.
Right now, MAGA activists are fuming online about North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis refusing to support Ed Martin. The Senate Judiciary Committee, which must approve Martin’s nomination, has 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. Tillis’s opposition would result in an 11-11 tie that fails to advance Martin to the floor.
The clock is ticking.
MAGA activists are railing against Tillis as an “enemy,” a “traitor,” a “RINO,” and more. But Tillis represents the State of North Carolina, a state MAGA has a good history of losing outside of Trump. He does not care that the online keyboard warriors are upset with him.
He voted for Hegseth and the other Trump nominees. He will not support Ed Martin. The MAGA activists scream that Tillis voted for bad Biden nominees. He did. He has voted for bad Trump nominees too. Contrary to the demands and claims of some, Senate Majority Leader John Thune cannot unilaterally remove Senator Tillis from the Judiciary Committee.
Making Ed Martin a hill to die on is silly because all it does is embolden Judge Boasberg to fill the role. Tillis may be on the ballot again next year. The odds are Trump sticks with him or Tillis does not run again — in either case, there are no real points of leverage against the man whose vote is necessary for Ed Martin. And, should Tillis not run again next year, he has until January 3, 2027, to antagonize MAGA and will be further emboldened to do so as they heap impotent invective on him.
In other words, MAGA risks not only wasting time on Ed Martin but also emboldening Tillis to be even more independent at a time when the President’s tax cuts, reconciliation, etc. are trying to advance.
The cult-like keyboard warriors are very good at raging and very bad at strategizing. They are most likely not going to get Tillis to change his mind, so they need to put pressure on the Trump Administration to move on from Ed Martin to someone else before Martin’s 120-day term passes.
The Trump Administration has been slow to advance judicial nominees and has been slow to pivot here. But having now ditched the President’s first Surgeon General pick, it would behoove the President and his base to give up on Martin and move on to someone else before Judge Boasberg weighs in.
Concurrently, this is a reminder that the Senate and its processes matter. The emotional meltdown of keyboard warriors threatening Thom Tillis matters very little. The people who pushed Mark Robinson to the front of the line for the gubernatorial nomination in North Carolina do not exactly have a great track record. They can say Tillis is too unreliable a vote for them so they might as well let a Democrat have the seat. But then that puts the GOP at greater risk of losing the Senate and forestalling any future advances in Trump’s agenda.
The base will cut off its nose to spite its face. Judge Boasberg is waiting for that.
