Senate Democrats are racing to confirm up to 30 federal judges nominated by Joe Biden to avoid leaving vacancies that could be filled by Donald Trump when he retakes the White House.
The expected flurry of judicial approvals has been triggered by the Democrats’ loss of their single-seat majority in last week’s elections, in which Republicans took 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats.
It means the current Senate has just over seven weeks to confirm Biden’s picks before the new Congress is sworn in on 3 January, two and a half weeks before Trump’s inauguration.
The White House is calling on Democratic senators to work around the clock to win approval for Biden’s liberal-leaning nominees to federal district and appeals courts, many of whom are women or ethnic minorities.
Sixteen have already been approved by the Senate judiciary committee and need to be brought to a floor vote for final confirmation. Another eight are still in the committee awaiting consideration.
At stake is the desire to enhance Biden’s legacy of liberal judge appointees while limiting Trump’s capacity to add to the number of conservative appointments he made to the bench during his first presidency.
Trump made 234 judicial appointments – the second most of any president – and nominated three rightwing justices to the supreme court, who drastically altered the court’s balance and presaged a spate of conservative-inspired rulings.
In a social media post, Trump demanded without any authority that the Democrats should not approve judges before they lose their narrow Senate majority.
“No Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over [Senate] Leadership. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE,” the president-elect wrote on his Truth Social network.
His entreaties opened him up to accusations of hypocrisy, given that in the weeks after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden the Republican-led Senate approved 14 of his chosen judges. They included Aileen Cannon, who oversaw the classified document case against Trump in Florida and who subsequently dismissed special prosecutor Jack Smith’s indictment against him.
Biden has successfully appointed 214 judges so far – meaning that if those awaiting confirmation are approved, he will have slightly surpassed the number of judicial appointments made by Trump in his first presidency.
The president’s aides are urging Senate Democrats to move quickly.
“There is a push across the board from the White House and the Senate for Democrats to show up and do the job they were elected to do,” CNN quoted a senior White House official as saying.
“I hope we are going to see some later nights. On a day you would normally process two nominees, why not process three?”
The tight schedule will depend on high Democratic attendance, in order to overcome Republican determination to obey Trump’s desire to block new appointments. It may also fall foul of moderates like Joe Manchin, the outgoing independent senator for West Virginia who was until recently a Democrat, and who has said he will vote against any nominee who does not have the approval of at least one Republican.
April Perry, the first nominee on the backlog, was confirmed on Tuesday as a US judge for the northern district of Illinois in a 51-44 vote that included the backing of two moderate Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Among those awaiting confirmation is Adeel Mangi, who has been nominated to the third circuit court of appeals in Philadelphia, and would be the country’s first Muslim appellate judge.
