Senate Democrats are pushing to confirm more than two dozen of President Joe Biden’s remaining judicial nominees during their final weeks in the majority, including several with controversial records.
The Senate has already confirmed four judges during the lame duck session: Judge Mustafa Taher Kasubha to the District of Oregon, Judge Embry Kidd to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge April Perry to the Northern District of Illinois and Judge Jonathan Hawley to the Central District of Illinois.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Monday on the Senate floor that Democrats will “keep working to confirm as many of President Biden’s judicial nominees as we can before the end of the year,” according to The Hill.
Trump called on Truth Social Tuesday for an end to confirming Biden-nominated judges.
“The Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door,” he wrote. “Republican Senators need to Show Up and Hold the Line — No more Judges confirmed before Inauguration Day!”
Kidd, who was confirmed Monday by a 49-45 vote, was criticized by Republicans for failing to disclose two of his rulings as a magistrate judge granting pretrial release to child sex offenders. Both rulings were reversed by the district court.
Another Biden nominee confirmed in a 51-44 vote Tuesday, Judge Mustafa Taher Kasubhai, instructs parties in his courtroom to address one another using preferred pronouns.
“The effort today is similar to what Republicans did four years ago, when their party also lost the White House and Senate,” Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“It’s unlikely that all of the nominees now pending before the Senate will be confirmed, some are highly controversial and may not have enough votes,” Jipping continued. “There are also a few important pieces of legislation that Congress has to address and [the] number of days available for Senate floor activity is dwindling.”
During his first term, Trump confirmed 234 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices. As of Monday evening, Biden confirmed 216 judges.
“If Elizabeth Warren and these left-wing radicals get their way, Biden is going to surpass President Trump’s first term,” Article III project president Mike Davis said Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s War Room. “How do you stop this? It means Senate Republicans need to show up to work and grind the Senate to a halt.”
George Mason University law professor Robert Luther, who helped prepare judicial nominees as Associate Counsel to the President during Trump’s first term, said Thursday during a panel at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention that it will be a big deal if Democrats are able to confirm a significant number of judges.
“Many or all may still be confirmed, but if Republican Senators don’t focus on this, you can be sure they will be,” Luther said.
Trump started his term in 2017 with 108 vacancies available on the first day. In January, he will begin with significantly fewer available seats.
“If you had hundreds of vacancies awaiting you during the term, maybe you could convince yourself it wouldn’t be the end of the world,” Luther said. “But Trump isn’t going to have anywhere near the vacancies we had in 2017.”
The remaining nominees include “abysmal picks,” many of whom have “been lingering for eight months or more” without confirmation, JCN President Carrie Severino wrote Friday in the National Review.
“It is critical that Republican senators unite in opposition and show up during the lame duck session to try and block any more radical and unfit Biden judicial nominees from being confirmed to lifetime positions on the federal bench,” Severino wrote.
Biden’s nominees have had a higher percentage of no votes than Trump’s nominees, at an average of 38.1 compared to 22.2 votes in opposition, according to the Heritage Foundation’s judicial appointment tracker.
Demand Justice, a left-wing organization that promotes court packing, launched an initiative Friday pressing Democrats to confirm as many judges as possible
“With only weeks left before the new Congress, it’s more urgent than ever that Democratic senators do whatever it takes – staying late, working weekends – during the lame duck session to confirm the dozens of remaining fair-minded, qualified judges nominated by President Biden that the American people deserve,” Demand Justice Managing Director Maggie Jo Buchanan wrote in a statement.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights likewise penned a letter to senators joined by over 140 groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign, urging Congress to “confirm every pending judicial nominee.”
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