When glorified blogger and bona fide ghost hunter Brett Talley, who had never tried a case, was tapped by Donald Trump for a lifetime appointment as a federal district judge, his inexperience raised eyebrows—and that was before it was revealed that he had failed to mention a glaring conflict of interest. But the Trump administration has never been averse to filling open positions with woefully mismatched or under-qualified candidates, which made the reported news that Talley would remove himself from consideration all the more remarkable. On Wednesday, a Trump administration official confirmed that Talley’s nomination “will not be moving forward,” throwing a wrench into the president’s judiciary strategy, and offering the first sign of compunction among Republicans who have stayed mum as a tide of ill-fitting staffers has overtaken the White House.

Talley’s nomination had been controversial from the outset. Though he attended Harvard Law School, he had [practiced law for less than three years, and had received a “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. Despite all that, he was easily confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee back in November, but his candidacy was thrown into limbo when Senator Chuck Grassley voiced his concerns on Tuesday, asking the White House to “reconsider” his nomination. “I would advise the White House not to proceed,” he told CNN. The White House had responded in the negative when Talley reportedly offered to withdraw his nomination last week, but following the uproar, Team Trump evidently changed its tune.

A second controversial nominee, Jeff Mateer, had been similarly deemed “not qualified” by the A.B.A.: CNN reported back in September that Mateer had called transgender children part of “Satan’s plan,” pushed conversion therapy, and that homosexuality would lead to bestiality. Grassley expressed similar doubts about Mateer’s nomination, and on Wednesday afternoon confirmed that his name, too, had been withdrawn. Though both candidates seemed like shoo-ins—Talley had been awaiting a Senate vote, and Mateer was awaiting confirmation from the Senate Judiciary Committee—Grassley told reporters that neither had not disclosed his past comments, and in Talley’s case, did not acknowledge his wife’s connection to the White House. (Charitably, Grassley suggested that the White House’s vetting process did not take social media and data footprints into account.)

Republicans’ eleventh-hour rejection of Talley and Mateer marks the first time the G.O.P. has taken issue with any of the president’s judicial nominees; in his 11 months in office, Trump has successfully nominated 59 young conservative judges and confirmed 14, effectively ensuring that his influence will be felt long after he leaves office. It also suggests that they might finally be drawing a line in the sand, albeit one that takes the fairly obvious tack of condemning overt racism and homophobia and gross incompetence. The procession of shockingly bad Trump nominees, from an energy secretary who did not initially know what the department did to an E.P.A. chief waging war on the climate to a secretary of Housing and Urban Development who has declared poverty a “state of mind,” has so far gone unremarked. But as the president’s political capital dwindles—Tuesday night’s election marked the second time he backed a losing candidate—the G.O.P.’s elder statesmen may quietly put their foot down on the most egregious examples of political operatives made in the same mold as their fumbling boss.