Chuck Schumer has disclosed how he has been working behind the scenes to appoint liberal judges to America’s federal courts to counter Donald Trump’s initiatives.
For the next couple of years, Democrats are likely to have limited influence, with their only hope of gaining ground in the Senate, House, and White House resting on special elections to fill Trump’s Cabinet vacancies.
Despite the challenging outlook, Schumer, who will continue to serve as Senate Minority Leader, highlighted a potential source of encouragement: President Biden has nominated 235 federal judges during his presidency, surpassing Trump’s total by one.
‘I don’t know exactly what he’ll do. But I can tell you this: The judiciary will be one of our strongest – if not our strongest – barrier against what he does,’ Schumer told Politico last night.
The New York Democrat says he and Biden hatched a scheme at the start of his term to put confirming judges at the top of their agenda, sometimes even coming before passing policy goals.
‘When we started out, we knew it would be a very difficult job to do more than Trump had done but we did,’ Schumer said.
While Biden will only end up sending Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, Schumer says this president’s nominees now make up 25 percent of the federal judiciary.
It appears that will remain the case after the president infuriated Republicans earlier this week, vetoing bipartisan legislation that would have created 66 new federal judges.
Chuck Schumer believes there will be a judicial resistance to Donald Trump ‘s MAGA revolution after Joe Biden appointed one more federal judge to the bench than his predecessor
Schumer, who will remain Senate Minority Leader, offered a reason for optimism: the 235 federal judges Biden appointed during his term, one more than Trump
Conservative legal analyst Jonathan Turley called Biden a ‘craven partisan’ for nixing the law in a Fox News op-ed.
‘In vetoing the act, Biden once again shredded any claim to being a president who could put the public interest ahead of petty political interests. It ends his presidency on a cynical, obstructionist note,’ Turley wrote.
The White House said in a statement ‘hurried action’ by the House left important questions unanswered about the life-tenured positions.
‘The efficient and effective administration of justice requires that these questions about need and allocation be further studied and answered before we create permanent judgeships for life-tenured judges,’ Biden said.
He said the bill would also have created new judgeships in states where senators have not filled existing judicial vacancies and that those efforts ‘suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.
As for Schumer, adding liberal judges is going to be a firewall against Trump repealing their policy accomplishments.
‘We knew that getting more judges on the bench would help protect our legislative record,’ Schumer told Politico.
‘The two did go hand in hand. If you asked me which one was more important, I wouldn’t want to pick among my children.’
While Biden will only end up sending Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, Schumer says this president’s nominees now make up 25% of the federal judiciary
It appears that will remain the case after the president infuriated Republicans earlier this week, vetoing bipartisan legislation that would have created 66 new federal judges
The Senator says he’s only following the strategy put forth by George W. Bush’s White House.
‘When I became majority leader, I said, ‘This is something we have to work on, we have to focus on.’
He said he ‘had to persuade’ skeptical Senate colleagues that it was something worth doing but declined to name which were problematic.
Schumer claims that Trump and the Republican Party will try to get rid of Biden’s record on ‘everything.’
‘They have so many different parts of MAGA: the people who are anti-women’s rights; the people who are anti-environment; the people who are anti-working people rights and union rights; the people who are anti-the consumer. They’re going to use the judiciary in every way they can,’ he said.
The tally also marks the largest number of confirmations in a single term since the Jimmy Carter administration.
Come next year, Republicans will look to boost Trump’s already considerable influence on the makeup of the federal judiciary in his second term.
Biden and Senate Democrats placed particular focus on adding women, minorities and public defenders to the judicial rank.
Schumer says he’s only following the strategy put forth by George W. Bush’s White House
Republican Senator from Iowa and incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley said the Democrats had their priorities straight but says Donald Trump will confirm over 240 judges
About two-thirds of Biden’s appointees are women and a solid majority of appointees are people of color.
‘When I ran for President, I promised to build a bench that looks like America and reflects the promise of our nation. And I´m proud I kept my commitment to bolstering confidence in judicial decision-making and outcomes,’ Biden said in a statement.
Biden also placed an emphasis on bringing more civil rights lawyers, public defenders and labor rights lawyers to expand the professional backgrounds of the federal judiciary.
More than 45 appointees are public defenders and more than two dozen served as civil rights lawyers.
While Biden did get more district judges confirmed than Trump, he had fewer higher-tier circuit court appointments than Trump – 45 compared to 54 for Trump.
And he got one Supreme Court appointment compared with three for Trump.
Republicans, much to Democrats’ frustration, filled Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the court the week before the 2020 presidential election. Ginsburg had passed away in September.
Democrats also faced the challenge of confirming nominees during two years of a 50-50 Senate.
Democrats are set to be largely shut out of power for the next two years, with special elections to replace Trump’s Cabinet nominees their only shot at recovering any of the Senate , House and White House
President Joe Biden arrives to speak at the Department of Labor in Washington
Rarely a week went by in the current Congress when Schumer did not tee up votes on judicial confirmations as liberal groups urged Democrats to show the same kind of urgency on judges that Republicans exhibited under Trump.
Chuck Grassley, a Republican, and the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Democrats showed newfound resolve on judicial confirmations.
‘They learned a lesson from the first Trump administration,’ Grassley said. ‘Paying attention to the number of judges you get and the type of judges you put on the court is worth it.’
Trump will inherit nearly three dozen judicial vacancies, but that number is expected to rise because of Republican-appointed judges who held off on retirement in hopes that a Republican would return to office and pick their replacements.
There also liberal judges who could face potential legal action after backing out of their retirement plans after Trump won in November.
The Article III Project, a group run by Trump ally Mike Davis, in mid-December announced it had meanwhile filed judicial misconduct complaints against the two trial court judges who likewise rescinded retirement plans post-election.
Those judges are U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn in North Carolina and U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley in Ohio.
U.S. Circuit Judge James Wynn, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama on the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, disclosed his decision in a letter to Democratic President Joe Biden on that same day.
It marked the first time since Trump won the Nov. 5 election that a Democratic-appointed appellate judge had rescinded plans to take senior status, a form of semi-retirement for judges that creates vacancies presidents can fill.
Grassley promised regardless of what happens that he’ll work to best Biden’s number.
‘Let me assure you, by January 20th of 2029, Trump will be bragging about getting 240 judges,’ Grassley said.
