Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., used his opening remarks during the Senate’s first judicial nominee hearing of the year on Wednesday to remind his colleagues that he was holding up at least one of President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice nominees.

‘I’ve got a hold on one nominee from Florida,’ Durbin said. ‘I’ve spoken to both Florida senators about it. It isn’t personal. We’ve got to find a way out of this that is fair and bipartisan that we’re going to stick with for both political parties.’

Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is blocking the nomination of Jason Reding Quinones, Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of Florida. Durbin also recently threatened to obstruct more of Trump’s picks to lead the DOJ’s 93 U.S. attorney’s offices.

Durbin’s threat loomed over the committee hearing, which featured five of Trump’s nominees to fill federal judge positions. The Illinois Democrat attributed his blockade to Vice President JD Vance announcing a hold on DOJ nominees in 2023. Vance, then a senator, said he would not lift his hold on nominees until then-Attorney General Merrick Garland stopped ‘going after his political opponents,’ a reference to the two federal prosecutions of Trump.

Any senator has the power to use holds to object to nominations. The practice significantly slows down the confirmation process because it prevents senators from voting for nominees through the typical, expedited unanimous consent process.

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, argued Wednesday that, like Durbin, he too disagreed with Vance’s decision, but Grassley said it was notably different than Durbin’s.

‘This isn’t what you can legitimately call a precedent for blanket obstruction at the beginning of an administration before even a single one of these 93 U.S. attorneys have been filled,’ Grassley said.

Grassley, who himself has hindered nominees in past administrations, said holds should be used ‘selectively’ and quoted Durbin saying last Congress that ‘public safety will suffer across the United States’ if the obstruction of U.S. attorneys is carried out.

Durbin said Vance changed the rules ‘overnight.’

‘And guess what? The tables turn,’ Durbin said. ‘There comes a time when you want to move these by voice vote, and we’re going to have to say, as Democrats, we’re going to follow the Vance precedent.’

Durbin, who has an amicable relationship with Grassley, signaled he was willing to come to negotiate with Republicans over the Florida nominee, who has already been favorably reported out of the committee along party lines.

Asked by Fox News Digital what a resolution would look like, a Durbin spokeswoman pointed to the senator’s remarks during the hearing and declined to comment further. 

Durbin’s hold is not the only roadblock for Trump’s nominees. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Wednesday from the Senate floor that Republicans wanted to ‘quietly rubber-stamp’ Patrick Davis’ nomination and that he would not allow it.

Trump nominated Davis, a former Grassley aide, to serve as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legislative Affairs, who is responsible for handling DOJ’s correspondence with Congress. Schumer said he opposed Davis’ nomination in part because the DOJ has been unresponsive to his inquiries about the controversial luxury plane that Qatar gifted to the Trump administration.

‘They won’t even answer serious questions about this. This plane should be withdrawn,’ Schumer said.

He added that when ‘this Justice Department is as horrible as it is, as political as it is, as destructive of American values as it has been, no way.’

Grassley responded to Schumer on X: ‘Why would Democrats expect responsiveness to Congress from DOJ when they obstruct Pres Trump’s nominees who r responsible to ANSWER THEIR LTTRS????’

The last two Senate-confirmed heads of the Office of Legislative Affairs, during the Biden administration and first Trump administration, were confirmed through the speedy voice vote process.

Elon Musk’s diatribe against President Donald Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill’ continued Wednesday as Senate Republicans embarked on their own course to tweak and reshape the gargantuan legislative package.

The former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rehashed a similar talking point from his takedown of a previous House GOP government funding bill in December, which, after his input, was gutted and reworked.

The nation’s debt sits at over $36 trillion, according to FOX Business’ National Debt Tracker.

‘Call your Senator, Call your Congressman,’ Musk said among a flurry of posts on X. ‘Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL.’

Though Musk’s continued tirade against the bill sent House Republicans into a tizzy, on the other side of the Capitol, senators were busy hashing out the finer points of the legislation.

This time around, Musk, who just ended his four-month tenure as a special government employee rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, may not have the same level of impact, given that senators want their chance to shape the bill.

‘I mean, if Elon was going to give me advice on how to get to the moon, I’d listen,’ said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. ‘You know, if he was going to give me advice on how to raise several billion dollars from other billionaires, I’d listen.’

‘But… he doesn’t govern, you know, and so, to be honest, Elon, he’s not that big a factor,’ he continued. ‘I know he’s a glamorous sort of celebrity, but he’s not a big factor.’

Cramer’s comments came after Senate Republicans heard from the chairs of the Senate Banking, Armed Services and Commerce committees on how they would approach their respective portions of the megabill in a closed-door meeting.

After that meeting, members of the Senate Finance Committee, which will handle the tax portion of the package, met with Trump later to shore up support for the tax package.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R.-Kan., said that the president’s main message during the meeting was to ‘pass the damn bill’ with as few changes as possible. When asked if Trump seemed concerned about Musk’s impact on the bill’s fate, the lawmaker said ‘absolutely not.’  

‘It was almost laugh— more of a laughing conversation for 30 seconds,’ he said. ‘It was very much in jest and laughing, and I think he said something positive about Elon, appreciating what he did for the country.’

Congressional Republicans intend to use the budget reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster, meaning they do not need Senate Democrats to pass the package. However, they do need at least 51 Senate Republicans to get on board.

The Senate’s shot at tinkering with the reconciliation package comes after months of deliberations and negotiations in the House that culminated in a package that Trump has thrown his full support behind.

Some lawmakers want higher spending cuts to the tune of $2 trillion, others want a full rollback to pre-pandemic spending. Then there are pockets of resistance solidifying around cuts to Medicaid and green energy tax credit provisions baked into the House’s offering.

Among the green energy provisions on the chopping block are electric vehicle tax credits. Speculation has swirled that their proposed demise could be the driving force, in part, behind Musk’s anger toward the bill.

‘Any senator with a brain sees Elon’s comments for what they are, a CEO worried about losing business,’ a Senate Republican source told Fox News Digital. ‘The only reason he’s causing a fuss is because we’re getting rid of pork that benefits his electric car company.’

Musk had been pushing for deeper spending cuts until his new demand that the bill be nuked. Currently, the House GOP’s offering sets a goal of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade that, coupled with expected growth, would help offset the roughly $4 trillion price tag of making the president’s first-term tax cuts permanent.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, engaged with some of Musk’s posts on Tuesday and appeared to agree with the tech billionaire’s position that the bill had to go further to cut spending.

‘I think most of what he’s saying is he would like it to do more and be more aggressive to try to address the debt and deficit problem,’ Lee said.

However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found in its latest report that the bill would only cut $1.3 trillion, reduce revenues by roughly $3.7 trillion and add in the neighborhood of $2.4 trillion to the deficit.

Some lawmakers who had found common ground with Musk’s earlier anger with the ‘big, beautiful bill’ still found a common ally on the second day of his rant.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., reiterated to Fox News Digital that he shared Musk’s ‘skepticism’ of the bill. He would not say whether he agreed that congressional Republicans should start from scratch, but noted that his main objection to the bill was a plan to increase the nation’s debt limit by $5 trillion.

‘My main goal is to say, take the debt ceiling and make it a separate vote, and then vote on a separate bill, and then there’s still a need for less spending,’ he said. ‘But I would be very open to supporting the bill if we had more spending cuts and the debt ceiling was a separate vote.’

Former President Joe Biden doubled down on his use of an autopen on Wednesday, insisting that he was in control of the White House during his term in office.

President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into Biden’s administration, alleging that top officials used autopen signatures to cover up the former president’s cognitive decline.

‘I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,’ Biden said in a statement.

‘This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations,’ he added.

Trump called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to open investigations into top Biden officials on Wednesday, arguing they may have conspired to deceive the public about his mental state and exercised presidential authority through the autopen use.

Trump wrote in a Wednesday memo that the U.S. president has a tremendous amount of power and responsibility through his signature. Not only can the signature turn words into laws of the land, but it also appoints individuals to some of the highest positions in government, creates or eliminates national policies and allows prisoners to go free.

‘In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority,’ Trump wrote. ‘This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.’

‘Given clear indications that President Biden lacked the capacity to exercise his Presidential authority, if his advisors secretly used the mechanical signature pen to conceal this incapacity, while taking radical executive actions all in his name, that would constitute an unconstitutional wielding of the power of the Presidency, a circumstance that would have implications for the legality and validity of numerous executive actions undertaken in Biden’s name,’ he added.

House Republicans, led by Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, launched an investigation earlier last month aimed at determining whether Biden, who was in declining health during the final months of his presidency, was mentally fit to authorize the use of the autopen. Comer said last week he was ‘open’ to dragging Biden before the House to answer questions about the matter if necessary. 

Fox News’ Greg Wehner contributed to this report

Less than a week after leaving his position as head of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk is calling on Americans to urge their senators and representatives to ‘kill’ the ‘big, beautiful’ budget bill backed by President Donald Trump.

Musk has grown increasingly critical of Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ claiming that if passed, it would increase the U.S. budget deficit by $5 billion.

On Wednesday afternoon, Musk posted an image of the 2003 Uma Thurman movie ‘Kill Bill,’ appearing to reference his call to nix the Trump-backed bill.

‘We need a new bill that doesn’t grow the deficit,’ Musk said on X. 

In another post, Musk urged: ‘Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL.’ 

Musk said Tuesday afternoon that he ‘just can’t stand it anymore.’

‘This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,’ he said. ‘Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.’

Musk previously criticized the bill during an interview with CBS, noting he was ‘disappointed’ in the spending bill because ‘it undermines’ all the work his DOGE team was doing.

The bill passed the House in late May, ahead of Memorial Day, largely along party lines. However, two Republicans did vote against the measure, citing insufficient spending cuts and a rising national debt. GOP Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has also signaled he likely will not vote in favor of the bill in its current form, citing a debt ceiling increase that is a red line for him. 

Trump has lashed out at Paul and others for opposing the bill, but so far he has taken a more measured approach to Musk’s criticism.

‘Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Tuesday afternoon briefing when asked about Musk’s most recent criticism.

‘It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he’s sticking to it,’ she said. 

Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.