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Less than a week after winning a second term, Donald Trump published an odd item to his social media platform. The president-elect realized that Democrats might continue to confirm judicial nominees during the lame-duck session after the election, but he wanted the world to know that as far he was concerned, this would be “NOT ACCEPTABLE.”
Evidently, the Senate’s outgoing Democratic majority didn’t much care. NBC News reported:
The Democratic-led Senate confirmed the 235th federal judge nominated by President Joe Biden, marking a milestone for the outgoing occupant of the White House by giving him one more than former President Donald Trump secured. The latest confirmation Friday could be Biden’s last, meaning he will leave office having secured one Supreme Court justice, 45 appeals court judges, 187 district court judges and two judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade.
“The majority has now confirmed more judges under President Biden than any majority has confirmed in decades. This is historic,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared Friday night. The New York Democrat, who spent four years prioritizing this issue, added, “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.”
The boast was rooted in fact: The record for the most judicial appointments in a single four-year term was set by Jimmy Carter, who had 262 judges confirmed to the federal bench before his defeat in 1980. Trump came close, with 234, but Biden and his party’s narrow, four-year majority in the Senate ended up confirming 235 judges.
In addition to the raw numeric totals, Democratic leaders took pride in the ways in which these nominees have changed — and will continue to change — the face of the federal judiciary. Of the 235 confirmations, for example, 150 were women and 139 were people of color.
What’s more, Schumer’s office confirmed that the Democratic-led Senate confirmed more Black judges, more Hispanic judges, more women of color and more openly LGBTQ+ people than any other president’s full time in office.
The breakthroughs also included the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court, the first Muslim Americans on the federal bench, the first open lesbian to serve on any federal circuit court, the first Navajo federal judge ever confirmed, and the first Native Hawaiian woman ever confirmed.
This took a sustained, four-year effort. Just 10 days after Biden’s inauguration, NBC News reported that the new White House team and Senate Democrats were “embarking on a mission to shape the courts after Republicans overhauled them in the last four years.”
Nearly four years later, it’s fair to describe the mission as a success.
At this point, I know what some of you are probably thinking. “Sure, Steve, Democratic celebrations about this are understandable, but won’t Donald Trump and the Republican-led Senate simply add another 230 or so judges of their own?”
The answer, interestingly enough, is no. In fact, The Washington Post reported last month noting, “Even some Republicans acknowledge Trump probably won’t be able to confirm as many judges in his second term.”
“I’ve studied the data and, realistically, that 108 number that we had in 2017 is probably pretty close to the number of nominations President Trump will be able to make over the entirety of his term if the Republicans keep the Senate” in the 2026 midterms, Robert Luther III, who worked on judicial nominations as an associate counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office during Trump’s first term, told a Federalist Society conference [in mid-November]. “Maybe a few more, maybe 120 in total.”
It’s a detail to keep in mind as Biden, Schumer and their allies take a victory lap of sorts on one of the party’s top priorities.