President Trump announced many nominees to fill federal court vacancies Monday evening, revealing the 10 conservatives he wants to put on the federal judiciary.
Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras, both included on Trump’s shortlists, have been nominated to federal appellate courts.
Larsen and Stras will join Judge Amul Thapar as nominees from the president’s Supreme Court shortlists who have also been nominated for appellate court seats. Hearings on Thapar’s 6th Circuit nomination began in the Senate last month.
The announcement comes less than a month after Trump’s first pick for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed as justice to the nation’s highest court, affecting the court’s ideological tilt.
While appeals courts tends to have a lower public profile, their role in adjudicating many of the orders and laws put forth by the administration will be significant.
Trump’s earliest efforts to implement his agenda were derailed by the courts, which pushed back against his proposed travel ban and his order to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities” that limit cooperation with immigration authorities.
After the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his immigration ban, Trump emphatically tweeted last February “SEE YOU IN COURT!” The administration vowed that it would re-appeal the ruling and either revise its original executive order or write a new one from scratch. But while a revised ban was later released, that too was blocked by the courts.
Trump told the Washington Examiner last month that he is considering breaking up the 9th Circuit, a federal appeals court that covers Western states and which has long been a target of Republicans.
It would take congressional action to break up the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Republicans have introduced bills this year to do just that.
Gorsuch’s 66-day confirmation process was bitterly divisive. It saw Senate Republicans trigger the “nuclear option” to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold for Gorsuch and all future high court nominees. The change allowed the Senate to hold a final vote to approve Gorsuch with a simple majority.
Most Democrats refused to support Gorsuch because they were still seething over the Republican blockade last year of President Barack Obama’s pick for the same seat, Merrick Garland. Senate Republicans refused to even hold a hearing for Garland, saying a high court replacement should be up to the next president.
Larsen, a former professor at the University of Michigan law school, has served on the Michigan Supreme Court bench since September 2015 and has written majority opinions in five cases.
She was a law clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative giant on the court, and spoke at a memorial following his death in February. She also served in the U.S. Justice Department when George W. Bush was president.
Stras formerly clerked for conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and is known to share the view of a limited role for the judiciary.
The full list of nominees also includes: Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett, nominated to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago; Louisville lawyer John Bush, nominated to the 6th Circuit; former Alabama Solicitor General Kevin C. Newsom, nominated to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta; Judge David C. Nye, nominated to the U.S. District Court for Idaho; former federal prosecutor Scott L. Palk, nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma; Damien Schiff, nominated to federal claims court; Dabney L. Friedrich, nominated to U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; and Judge Terry Moorer, nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
Trump’s nominees are already being met with criticism from Democrats who say the president is pushing the federeal judicary to the far right.
“With this first slate of lower court nominees, it seems that the President is intent on continuing to outsource the judicial selection process to hard right, special interest groups rather than consulting with Senators on a bipartisan basis,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a statement Monday.
“The President should work with members of both parties to pick judges from within the judicial mainstream, who will interpret the law rather than make it.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
