Amping up Republicans' war with Democrats over the federal judiciary, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly will end the century-old tradition of "blue slips" – important consent forms which the minority party is using to sidetrack some of President Donald Trump's far-right judicial nominees.

In an interview with The Weekly Standard published Wednesday, the Kentucky Republican declared he's scrapping the widely respected courtesy to put Trump's picks for critical federal judgeships on an even faster track to confirmation.

From now on, McConnell said, Senate Republicans will treat blue slips "as simply notification of how you're going to vote, not as an opportunity to blackball" a nominee. At the same time, he said, Democrats should prepare to see more hard-core conservatives reach the bench – with or without their cooperation.

When nominees "come out of committee, I guarantee they will be dealt with," McConnell told The Weekly Standard. "Regardless of what tactics are used by Democrats, the judges are going to be confirmed."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York scolded McConnell for the power moves, accusing him of poisoning the well of bipartisanship, which both sides need to get things done for voters. But the move also leaves his party nearly powerless to stop Trump's parade of conservative nominees for the federal bench.

"It's just a shame that Senator McConnell is willing to abandon it for circuit court judges," Schumer said in a statement Wednesday. He said he hoped that Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican "who has always believed in the traditions of the Senate, will resist Senator McConnell's request."

Two years ago, when he assumed the chairmanship, Grassley pledged to uphold Senate traditions, including respecting the blue slips. Grassley has recently hinted he wants to keep his word, but it's unclear whether he can withstand mounting pressure on his party, and on McConnell, to change course.

With no legislative accomplishments to show for unified GOP control of government, angry conservative donors are demanding some political wins, or they'll stop cutting big checks to McConnell's Republican incumbents and instead fund primary opponents further to the right in the 2018 midterms. That message, delivered to McConnell in person at an exclusive Los Angeles fundraiser, is a clear threat to his Senate majority and his position as one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington.

The majority leader and other Republican lawmakers, however, point to the confirmation of several of Trump's conservative judicial nominees, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, as proof they can get things done.

Nevertheless, McConnell in particular is under fire from multiple sides who want him to bring Trump something – anything – substantial from Capitol Hill to boast about before the 2018 midterms.

The president has excoriated McConnell on Twitter for failing to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's health care law, and influential conservatives blame the majority leader for bungling the opportunity. Meanwhile, the Judicial Crisis Network, a deep-pocketed conservative group, reportedly had teed up a big-dollar ad campaign suggesting McConnell is responsible for what they believe are snail's-pace judicial confirmations.

To that point, another right-leaning legal interest group, the Conservative Action Project, released a memo calling on McConnell to immediately "schedule committee and floor action every Thursday and Friday for the foreseeable future" to confirm judges and other administration officials, according to The Weekly Standard.

Message received, McConnell told the journal: "I decide the priority ... Priority between an assistant secretary of state and a conservative court judge – it's not a hard choice to make."

While conservatives cheered McConnell's decision to eliminate blue slips, advocacy groups on the left accused him of blatant hypocrisy.

"Throughout the Obama Administration, [McConnell] demanded meaningful consultation between the White House and home-state senators on judicial nominees. The chief instrument in that consultation process was the blue slip," Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice, said in a statement Wednesday. Besides upending a century of Senate tradition, she said, McConnell "is apparently poised to make a hypocrite of his own Senate Judiciary Chairman, who is on record saying he will absolutely honor the blue slip in his committee."

While the blue slips are mostly traditional and not bound by Senate rules, the Senate largely functions by tradition. By withholding the document, senators can stall a nomination indefinitely – leverage to bring the majority, or even the White House, to the negotiating table for legislation or a more acceptable nominee.

Democrats accused Republicans of liberally using the tradition not only to block Obama's judicial nominees but to force the White House to change a policy or proposal they didn't like. When McConnell stripped Democrats of the filibuster during the Gorsuch confirmation, it meant that Republicans could approve him, and future judicial nominees, on a straight party-line vote.

Lawmakers had used blue slips to protest the fact that Trump didn't consult with them first before nominating arch-conservative jurists and legal scholars to fill some 150 vacancies on the federal bench – positions, they argue, that Obama couldn't fill before leaving office because of GOP obstructionism. They also want Grassley to stop what they say is the rapid-fire confirmation process for critical judgeships on federal circuit and appellate courts.

Last month, Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon told the White House that they won't approve the nomination of Ryan Bounds, a highly conservative federal prosecutor whom Trump wants for an appellate court vacancy. Merkley and Wyden held on to their blue slips for Bounds because Trump didn't consult with them and the nominee's record hasn't been carefully scrutinized.