Same Playbook, Different State: Why Nevada Knows This Story
A judge in Seattle thought he'd found a clever way around President Trump. It lasted about 30 minutes.
On Wednesday morning, Roger Rogoff walked into the U.S. Attorney's office for the Western District of Washington ready to run the place. Federal judges had picked him for the job.
He wasn't there long. The White House fired him before his coffee got cold.
Here's how we got here.
Back in October, Attorney General Pam Bondi named Charles Neil Floyd as interim U.S. Attorney in Seattle.
Federal law gives an interim pick 120 days to get Senate confirmed. Floyd's clock ran out in February.
Washington's senior senator, Democrat Patty Murray, made it clear she'd block him anyway using the Senate's “blue slip” custom, a tradition that lets home-state senators veto nominees like this one.
So the district court didn't wait around. Its judges opened their own application process and picked Rogoff, a former King County judge appointed twice by Democrat Governor Jay Inslee.
Chief Judge David Estudillo made the appointment official in a July 8 letter, calling Rogoff a man respected among Washington bar members for diligence and fairness.
Rogoff showed up Wednesday to take the reins. The Trump administration wasn't having it.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had already tipped his hand back in February, telling reporters plainly, judges don't pick U.S. attorneys, the president does.
He kept that promise. Floyd, the guy Rogoff was supposed to replace, is still running the office today.
Now here's the part that should sound familiar to every Nevadan reading this. We've watched this exact fight play out at home.
Sigal Chattah got named Nevada's interim U.S. Attorney back in March 2025. Her 120 days ran out too.
The Justice Department tried keeping her in charge by shuffling her title to “first assistant.”
A federal judge wasn't buying it and ruled she wasn't legally running the show, which put some of her prosecutions in legal limbo.
Nevada's two Democratic senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, made the same blue slip threats Murray made in Washington.
The fight went all the way to the Ninth Circuit. Eventually the White House cut its losses and nominated Las Vegas attorney George Kelesis instead, someone with a track record both parties could stomach.
Seattle and Nevada are really the same story wearing different hats.
In state after state where Democrat senators control the blue slip, the 120-day interim clock runs out, and federal judges step in using their own statutory fallback power.
The Trump administration keeps answering the same way: fire them fast and dare the courts to stop it.
Critics call this executive overreach, judges getting steamrolled by a White House that doesn't respect the process.
That's a fair worry to raise. Nobody wants a system where courts get ignored just because Washington doesn't like their pick. But there's another side here too.
The Constitution gives the president, not a panel of judges, the job of running federal law enforcement.
If home-state senators can block every nominee they don't like forever, using a Senate custom that isn't even written into law, something's broken on that end too.
Nevada's had a front row seat to this fight for over a year now. Seattle just got its turn. Don't be surprised if it isn't the last stop either.
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