Is This What Could End The Democratic Stonewalling of Trump’s Judicial Nominees?

President Trump is working to fulfill his campaign promise to seat judges who respect both the rule of law and the Constitution. Trump fulfilled this pledge when he nominated Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has a strong record of interpreting the law as it is written, not as he wishes it were written.

The president should also be commended for nominating similarly fair-minded and qualified judges for lower courts. Thanks to the hard work of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, 38 of these well-qualified nominees have been confirmed.

But liberal senators, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., continue to obstruct the president’s nominees by abusing Senate rules and procedures. As a result, total judicial vacancies are ballooning. When Trump took office, there were 108 judicial vacancies. Now, there are 176 current and known future judicial vacancies.

Why have vacancies nearly doubled? Because members of the Democratic minority are hell-bent on preventing Trump from putting judges on the court who will respect the Constitution. They’d much rather have judges willing to legislate liberal causes from the bench.

Under Schumer’s direction, Democrats have embarked on an obstruction campaign to create gridlock in the Senate, impeding or even halting the confirmation of Trump’s nominees. Democrats are weaponizing Senate procedure in an attempt to run out the clock on the Trump administration.

One tool they’ve latched onto is the cloture process. Rather than allowing the Senate to directly proceed to a vote on a nominee as used to be the norm, Democrats are using this to force up to 30 hours of debate on a nominee, even when that “debate” consists of an empty Senate chamber or senators talking about unrelated topics. In many cases, dozens of hours of the Senate’s time have been wasted “debating” nominees who have unanimous support, simply letting the clock run down without mentioning the nominee once.

By insisting on going through the cloture process for nearly every nominee, Democrats have slowed confirmations to a glacial pace. Their plan is to slow the confirmation of qualified Republican nominees so that they can preserve liberal dominance of the courts.

They are less interested in seating fair-minded judges than they are in confirming what Gorsuch called “politicians in robes” — liberal politicians, of course. They fear Trump’s nominees because they know that they would be impartial judges who would protect constitutional rights, including free speech, religious liberty, and the right to bear arms.

For the sake of our courts, as well as the credibility of the Senate, this blatant obstruction of qualified nominees must be stopped. Fortunately, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., has offered a solution: The Lankford Proposal would amend the body’s rules to shorten the length of post-cloture debate. The proposal would still grant 30 hours of debate post-cloture for Cabinet-level positions, Supreme Court justices, and Court of Appeals judges, but would cap post-cloture debate for all other nominees at eight hours, and district court nominees, who would be capped at just two hours. These same limitations were adopted as a temporary measure in 2013 by a majority of senators in both parties. The Senate should immediately adopt this proposal to stop those who seek to waste the American people’s valuable time and put qualified judges on the bench.

Confirming the president’s extraordinary judicial nominees is a top priority for me and my organization, the Judicial Crisis Network, and we are committed to doing whatever necessary to end this Democratic obstruction. That’s why we’ve launched a campaign in support of Lankford’s gridlock reform. It’s time to tell the Senate Democrats who are obstructing Trump’s picks that they must stop playing games and start voting for qualified judicial nominees. Our courts — and our country — deserve better.

“...But liberal senators, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., continue to obstruct the president’s nominees by abusing Senate rules and procedures. As a result, total judicial vacancies are ballooning. When Trump took office, there were 108 judicial vacancies. Now, there are 176 current and known future judicial vacancies....”
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The Turtleman (and possibly certain other RINOs such as Murkowski & Susan Collins) share in the responsibility for this intentional super-slow walk.

Good luck with this. McConnell is part of the problem. He’s happy with slowing down anything that might support Trump. Running out the clock in hopes of seeing Trump gone.

Keep the Senate in session this summer and ram every single last one of them down the Democrats’ throats. They chose to go down this road when they were in the majority. The Republicans now need to use the Harry Reid nuclear option to push all of President Trump’s appointees through.

Miss Severino would do well to read a short instruction manual on how to write a news piece. If the article is entitled, “Is This What Could End The Democratic Stonewalling of Trump’s Judicial Nominees?”, it should not take nine paragraphs to get to the “This” in the headline. A news story shouldn’t unfold like a Dickens novel. Most Townhall readers don’t need much backstory on the stonewalling of Trump’s nominees, either.

Good luck with this. McConnell is part of the problem. He’s happy with slowing down anything that might support Trump. Running out the clock in hopes of seeing Trump gone.

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If these politicians think we’re EVER going back to business-as-usual the corrupt scumbags have another thing coming.

As far as I’m concerned, if future candidates aren’t part of the Trump party (or whatever you want to call it), they won’t get my vote.

I will never again just automatically vote for someone with an “R” next to their name, or to keep some RAT out of office. I deeply regret my votes for McCain and Romney. We have a choice now. Someone showed us it could be done.

I am at a loss as to how Trump is being “stonewalled.”

He has gotten 21 Circuit Court judges confirmed in less than a year and a half—not just a record, but an astounding record.

Obama had a handful; JFK (who previously held the record) had 14.

Three more will be confirmed next week. Jimmy Carter had the FIRST TERM record of 56, so Trump is just shy of Carter’s pace with a full six months to go. This wee we will take full conservative control of the (I think) 3rd or 5th district.

Trump had a fast confirmation of Gorsuch, and can expect two more nominees when Buzzi croaks and Kennedy retires. Maybe more.

ALREADY Trump has named a whopping 23% of the federal bench.

Please tell me how this is “stonewalling.”

I think it’s the district court judges that had been languishing, at least till this week. They’d been concentrating on the circuit courts. And the 30 hours for cloture has been a real thing.

We have an attorney in our firm nominated for the local district court. Been languishing since January when reported out of committee. Stonewalling is the only explanation why not confirmed yet.

Of course. They could plug all these parliamentary loopholes and get things moving, but they prefer the obstruction, as long as they can point to the Democrats come election time and say “they did it, not us!”

I am at a loss as to how Trump is being “stonewalled”....

....ALREADY Trump has named a whopping 23% of the federal bench.

Please tell me how this is “stonewalling.”
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He’s also “named” the border wall. Support for Trump’s nominees (both judicial and non-judicial) in the Senate is slow. To say otherwise is to defend Senators who are far from deserving of our defense. The “hard-working” Senate is not at work and won’t reconvene until June 4th with the next vote not scheduled until 5:30 pm on that day.

McConnell will never be accused of being a slave driver.

All in all, the pace of the Senate is not surprisingly fast, nor slow. But if they keep up this pace of confirming judges, the rest won’t matter.

Trump already-—ALREADY-—has named 25% of the US circuit court judges in 17 months and will have 2 more coming next week.

There are 179 Judgeships authorized for the US Court of Appeals. Trump has made the best progress with this level. But I don’t think he has had 25% of these positions filled with CONFIRMED nominees.
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There are 677 judgeships authorized for US District Courts. His progress at getting McConnell to CONFIRM nominees to this level leaves much to be desired. IMHO, McConnell has done a piss poor job of getting confirmation votes.

There are currently 146 total Judicial vacancies with 80 nominees pending. Let;s not make excuses for McConnelk not moving faster.

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