U.S. President-elect Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) gala at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., November 14, 2024.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday pushed his fellow Republicans in the Senate to stop Democrats from confirming any more of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees.
“The Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“Republican Senators need to Show Up and Hold the Line — No more Judges confirmed before Inauguration Day!” he wrote.
Democrats will lose their narrow Senate majority on Jan. 3. Trump is set to take office on Jan. 20.
The Senate has confirmed 216 of Biden’s nominees to the federal judiciary. The most recent addition, Judge Embry Kidd, was confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Monday.
Biden has put forward 261 total judicial nominees, the White House said in a Nov. 8 press release announcing his 56th round of hopefuls.
There are currently 45 total vacancies in the federal judiciary. That is less than half as many openings as when Trump took office in 2017.
Trump appointed 227 judges during his first term. Biden is on pace to surpass that number, with about two dozen nominees currently awaiting final confirmation or pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
With the clock running out, Democrats are working overtime to seat Biden’s judges.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning that he has taken steps toward confirming 12 more judges since the end of last week.
“We’re not done. There are more judges to consider and confirm. We’re going to spend the rest of this week and the rest of this year focused on confirming them,” Schumer said.
Republicans may be able to slow Democrats’ efforts to a crawl. They managed to create hours of delays on Monday night, by forcing lengthy roll-call votes on minor procedural motions that normally take a fraction of the time.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told ABC News he would continue to bog down the nomination process.
“If Sen. Schumer thought Senate Republicans would just roll over and allow him to quickly confirm multiple Biden-appointed judges to lifetime jobs in the final weeks of the Democrat majority, he thought wrong,” Thune told ABC.
Some Democrats say they’re up for the fight.
“I was on the Senate floor until almost midnight last night voting to confirm President Biden’s judicial nominees,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote on X.
“We’ll keep doing this until the clock runs out to confirm as many qualified Judges as we can & deliver for the people who elected us to stand up for their values,” Murray wrote.
Trump had previously demanded that “no judges should be approved” during the lame-duck session.
“The Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Nov. 10, less than a week after he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to secure another term.
At least two moderate GOP senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have shrugged off that command and voted to confirm some Biden judicial picks.
But many conservatives have heeded Trump, taking to social media to castigate Senate Republicans for what they see as inaction against Democrats’ efforts to confirm judges. They include right-wing influencer Mike Cernovich, conservative lawyer Mike Davis, and Grace Chong, who works for Trump ally Steve Bannon’s show “War Room.”
Chong on Tuesday morning tagged Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s vice president-elect, in a since-deleted post urging Republicans to “show up and do your one fricken job!!”
Vance on Tuesday afternoon replied that Chong was “a mouth breathing imbecile,” arguing that Biden’s latest nominee would have been confirmed regardless of whether he was there for the vote or not. Vance later deleted his reply.
“When this 11th Circuit vote happened, I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director,” Vance wrote.
“I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45. But that’s just me,” he wrote.