President Trump and Senate Republicans are closing in on the record for the most federal appeals court judges confirmed during a president’s first year in office.
The Senate has confirmed 10 of Trump’s federal appeals court appointees, including Tuesday’s vote to confirm Steven Grasz to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Votes to end debate on two more appeals court nominees, Texans James Ho and Don Willett to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, are expected soon.
If Senate Republicans confirm Ho and Willett before Jan. 20, Trump would surpass the record held by former presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Both Kennedy and Nixon confirmed 11 federal appeals court nominees during their first year in office, according to the Federal Judicial Center.
Senate Republicans also confirmed Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court during Trump’s first year in office, a signature accomplishment for Republicans in the executive and legislative branches who were aided by a change to Senate rules that cleared the path to his confirmation.
Unlike with Gorsuch’s confirmation, however, Senate Republicans avoided altering longstanding traditions while putting Trump’s judges on the federal bench.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged to do away with the upper chamber’s “blue slip” procedure to overcome Democrats’ obstruction of Trump’s nominees. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley worked behind the scenes with Democrats to maintain the tradition.
Under the Senate Judiciary Committee’s blue slip tradition, a state’s senators are consulted by the president’s administration before a president nominates a judge from that state. The states’ senators have then had the opportunity to request a block of the nominee from receiving a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and vote.
McConnell spoke out against Senate tradition amid pressure from conservatives seeking to confirm Trump’s judges, but Grassley vowed to keep the blue slip practice. Grassley also refused to allow a single senator to unilaterally block consideration of judicial nominees via a negative or unreturned blue slip and advanced Trump’s nominees to the Senate floor.
The pace of the committee’s work dictated by Grassley rubbed some Democrats the wrong way. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s top-ranking Democrat, has repeatedly complained about the committee’s up-tempo work and noted last week that, “This is the fastest confirmation pace I can remember in my 25 years of serving on this committee.”
The quick-moving effort to confirm Trump’s judges also has rankled GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, the lone Republican to vote against any appeals court nominee since Trump took office.
After voting against one nominee, Kennedy slowed Kyle Duncan’s nomination to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans before reversing course. Kennedy decided to support Duncan’s confirmation amid pressure from conservative groups, but at Thursday’s Judiciary Committee hearing, Kennedy said he would vote his conscience on judicial nominees even if it meant he gets put on “double secret probation.”
Leonard Leo, a Trump adviser on the Supreme Court and the judiciary, detailed at the Acton Institute in May the specific courts Trump would target and how long it would take to “swing” them to the right.
Leo also predicted in May the possibility of “as many as three Supreme Court vacancies” in the Trump era. The president released an updated short list for Supreme Court vacancies in November.
Kris Mauren, Acton Institute co-founder and executive director, introduced Leo at the May event as having “a significant leadership role in the selection and successful confirmation of a third of the currently sitting justices on the Supreme Court.” Leo then smiled as he took the podium and noted that his work was not yet done.
“I’ve seen that comment about the third of the Supreme Court, I prefer controlling interests,” Leo said to laughs from the crowd. “But we haven’t quite been able to launch a hostile takeover yet.”
