What’s New
The Senate confirmed the 235th federal judge nominated by President Joe Biden on Friday, taking his number of judicial appointments above Donald Trump‘s.
The appointment means Biden would have secured one Supreme Court justice, 45 appeals court judges, 187 district court judges and two judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade during his time in office—one more than the 234 confirmations Donald Trump secured during his first term as president.
“These men and women have the power to uphold basic rights or to roll them back,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “President Biden is proud of his record of appointments and grateful to the Senate for its partnership in reaching this historic achievement.”
Newsweek has contacted the White House and Trump’s transition team for comment via email.
Why It Matters
All of Biden’s picks will serve lifetime appointments, meaning they will serve to protect his legacy when Trump takes office and begins to unravel Biden’s policy agenda. Trump has pledged to hold the largest mass deportation in history, which will likely face challenges in the courts.
Ben Curtis/AP
What To Know
Following Trump’s win in the election, Democrats have been attempting to confirm as many of Biden’s judicial appointments as possible.
“While still in charge of the Senate and the White House, we must do all we can to safeguard our democracy,” wrote Senator Elizabeth Warren in Time Magazine in November. “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer must use every minute of the end-of-year legislative session to confirm federal judges and key regulators—none of whom can be removed by the next president.”
The same month, Schumer filed for cloture to try to speed up Biden’s federal judge nominations. “We are going to get as many done as we can,” Schumer said at the time, according to The New York Times.
The Democrats‘ 235 confirmations will mean fewer judicial vacancies for Trump to fill when he takes office. This is in contrast to the start of Trump’s first term when he inherited more than 100 vacancies. But as Caroline Frederickson, former president of the progressive American Constitution Society, noted, this was because Republicans blocked many nominations during President Obama’s last two years in office—most prominently, then-Chief Judge Merrick Garland‘s nomination to the Supreme Court—and many of those seats were ultimately filled by Trump.
Trump is now on track to inherit the fewest judicial vacancies in generations, according to NBC News. Trump has previously attempted to convince Republicans to block any of Biden’s judicial nominations until he takes office. In a Truth Social post in November, he asked the Senate to block the nominations because “the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges.”
The White House also highlighted the “professional diversity” of Biden’s picks, including “more than 45 public defenders, more than 25 civil rights lawyers, and at least 10 who have represented workers,” as well as judges who have worked on “immigration law, municipal law, and plaintiffs’ side work.”
Biden has nominated the most women, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals to the court of any U.S. president. Biden nominated the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as 63 Black federal judges and a “record number of women, Black, Latino, AANHPI, Native American, Muslim-American, and LGBTQ judges.”
However, his judicial nomination record lags behind that of his predecessor in one key respect: Trump picked three Supreme Court justices, creating a 6-3 conservative-liberal majority. Two years later, the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, which had enshrined the federal right to an abortion.
What People Are Saying
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said: “The majority has now confirmed more judges under President Biden than any majority has confirmed in decades. This is historic. We have confirmed more judges than under the Trump administration, more judges than any administration in this century, more judges than any administration going back decades.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Judiciary Committee member, said: “The number is very consequential. We’re very relieved.”
But he added: “I’m not ready to uncork the Champagne, just because we’ve done some really good work over the last four years. We need to meet be prepared for the worst, hope for the best, and try to defeat nominees who are truly unqualified. We have our work cut out. So the prospects ahead are pretty sobering.”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz tore into Biden’s slate of judges, saying: “I found it astonishing that Senate Democrats were willing to rubber-stamp absolute zealots to be judges.”
Senator Chuck Grassley, the incoming chair of the Judiciary Committee, said Republicans will ensure Trump ends his second term with a combined total of more judges than Biden had.
“They’re going to brag about having 235 instead of instead of Trump’s 234,” Grassley told NBC News. “On January 20 of 2029, Trump’s going to brag about having 240.”
However, GOP Senator John Cornyn doubted this would be possible, owing to the few vacancies Trump will inherit.
“That’d be pretty impressive to beat,” Cornyn told NBC News. Republicans don’t need to be “in any numerical competition” with Biden’s term; they just need to “be diligent about filling those because those are obviously lifetime appointments,” he said.
What Happens Next
Friday’s confirmation will likely be Biden’s last appointment to the courts before he leaves office. Democrats in the Senate will now have to work to defeat Trump’s nominees to the courts when he takes office at the end of January. However, the Republican will control the Senate when the new term begins, so this is likely to be difficult for the Democrats.
