President Trump announced a slate of judicial nominations on Monday, taking the first major step toward filling the more than 100 open positions on lower courts throughout the country.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen was being picked to join the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras was selected to join the 8th Circuit in St. Louis. Others, he said, would be announced later Monday.
Trump presently faces 129 judicial vacancies, which are spread across all 11 circuits as well as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
And while he has already nominated nearly a dozen judges — including Judge Amul Thapar, whom Trump nominated to the Sixth Circuit appeals court in late March — the president has yet to shepherd any judges through the Senate confirmation process since Republicans confirmed Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court last month.
Republicans will need just 51 votes to fill each judicial vacancy thanks to Senate Democrats’ decision, in 2013, to eliminate the filibuster for all presidential nominations below the Supreme Court. Their invocation of the so-called “nuclear option” allowed GOP lawmakers to overcome Democrats’ objections to many of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doubled down on the nuclear option by extending it to Supreme Court nominations, preventing Democrats from sinking Gorsuch’s confirmation after the Supreme Court nominee failed to attract the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster.
The White House has hinted that Trump will nominate a new set of judges each month as the administration works to address the problems created by too many vacancies on the lower courts.
Months before Election Day, Trump published a list of judges from which he vowed to select his Supreme Court nominee. The president is expected to consider names on that list for the dozens of judicial nominations ahead of him.
