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US Circuit Judge & former FL Supreme Court Justice Barbara Lagoa is at the top of Trump's list to fill Justice Ginsburg's seat. Source who spoke to WH: “Justice Lagoa is perfect. [Trump] president wants a conservative jurist and he wants to win the biggest battleground." 1/3 2. Geography aside, Lagoa also has some demographic advantages: she's a Cuban-American from Miami (Hialeah), a crucial voting bloc for Trump. Source: "How do Democrats in the Senate vote against a Latina?” 2nd source: “Lagoa is at the top of the list. She checks a lot of boxes.”

This will be a weekly post. Count is now 203 judges confirmed. 2 Trade Court judges 146 District Court judges 53 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices As of August 1st, Trump was tied with Carter for the most judges confirmed in a single term (the Congress at the time created a whole slew of new judgeships and Ted Kennedy speedily got them through). Trump has now exceeded Carter. Another Trump record! A 2nd term will bring more Circuit and Supreme Court confirmations!

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the Trump administration cannot withhold federal grants from California sanctuary cities, affirming previous rulings in the state. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco said its ruling that the Justice Department cannot block police funds from cities not enforcing immigration laws does not extend nationally, Bloomberg News reported. The decision follows rulings from three other regional federal appeals courts against the administration. But a New York court unanimously ruled in February that the department had the authority to withhold funds from the cities that do not comply with federal authorities' enforcement of...

A federal judge late Tuesday night struck down a Trump administration rule that banned most migrants from receiving asylum at the southern border with Mexico. U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly said the administration failed to follow the procedural law governing how regulations can be implemented, which requires advance notice and a period for the public to comment on the proposal. "These procedures are not a mere formality," Kelly, who was appointed by President Trump, said in his opinion. The rule was implemented last year by the Justice Department and Homeland Security in an attempt to crack down on migrants...

July 1 (UPI) -- A federal judge has invalidated a Trump administration rule requiring that refugees seeking asylum at the southern U.S. border must first apply in a "safe" third country. In a 52-page ruling late Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly of Washington, D.C., agreed with migrants and rights groups that the administration's "third-country asylum rule" violated U.S. law. The rule was implemented after a number of Central American migrants from Honduras and Guatemala sought asylum in the United States, due to gang violence in their native countries. The caravans traveled through Mexico to reach the U.S. border. The...

This will be a weekly post. Count is now 198 judges confirmed 143 District Court judges 53 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices This week Cory Wilson was confirmed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals vacancy. For a long while this vacancy was in limbo since Mick Mulvaney convinced President Trump to appoint one of his cronies, Sul Ozerden, to the seat. Ozerden wasn't sufficiently conservative so kept getting votes delayed in committee, then Senators Hawley and Cruz refused to support him. The Ozerden nomination then quietly expired with the congressional session. Wilson was nominated, and is now...

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday extended an order preventing the Trump administration from deporting a 16-year-old boy from Honduras under its emergency border declaration citing the coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Carl Nicholas in Washington did not rule immediately on the first challenge to a policy that has resulted in the rapid expulsions of hundreds of migrant children. Instead, he told lawyers for the government and the American Civil Liberties Union that he wanted to hear more about the case and make a final decision on the teen's fate in the near future. The judge did not set...

WASHINGTON — The Senate has approved the nomination of a Mississippi judge to a federal appeals court, the 200th federal judge named by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Republican-controlled chamber. It’s the highest number of judicial nominees confirmed at this stage of a presidency in four decades. Cory Wilson was elevated to a seat on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal despite Democratic objections that he has a record of working to undermine voting rights of African Americans and other minorities. Approval came on a nearly party-line, 52-48 vote Wednesday. Maine Sen. Susan Collins was...

The Big Con. What Senator Josh Hawley called the fraud of “the conservative bargain” is taking on an entirely new light thanks to the work of The National Pulse in what should be a game-changing expose’ on just who is funding, or should we say ‘controlling’, key aspects of expressed U.S. conservatism. President Trump, in a tenuous alignment with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has previously said the list of judicial nominees presented, considered, nominated and confirmed, were assembled and vetted by two specific groups: The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation; both of whom claim to hold conservative outlooks....

WASHINGTON — Justin Walker epitomizes the conservative judicial project. He became a federal judge at 37 with no trial experience and sterling right-wing credentials. Eight months later, he has been promoted to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a frequent feeder to the Supreme Court. Walker’s confirmation Thursday by a Senate vote of 51 to 42 puts President Donald Trump one shy of his 200th judicial confirmation, which is teed up for next week. It’s a number not achieved by any president at this stage in four decades. A Harvard J.D., Walker’s meteoric rise was aided...

The Senate on Thursday voted 51-42 to confirm Trump nominee Judge Justin Walker to the second-highest court in the country, marking the 199th Article III judge confirmed to this point in the president's term. The vote was nearly along party lines, with only GOP Maine Sen. Susan Collins joining Democrats in opposition. Walker will join the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he previously worked as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Walker also clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and served as an intern for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a speechwriter for former...

A federal judge tied to an ethics proposal that would bar judges from joining the Federalist Society and its would-be liberal equivalent, the American Constitution Society (ACS), was an ACS member as recently as 2010, prompting charges of bad faith from legal conservatives. The Committee on Codes of Conduct, an official judicial body that gives ethics advice to federal judges, produced a draft advisory opinion that would bar judges from joining the Federalist Society or ACS. Though the committee's work is confidential and the opinion was unsigned, conservative lawyers and commentators have pushed suspicions that Chief Judge John McConnell of...

Senate Democrats released a 50-plus page report Wednesday sounding alarm bells over the rate at which Senate Republicans and President Trump have confirmed federal judges during the president's first term as Republicans are working on shepherding along even more lifetime-appointed federal judges. The account calls GOP-appointed judges "politicians in robes," rails against the Chief Justice John Roberts' Supreme Court, slams the conservative and libertarian lawyers' group the Federalist Society and says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is "betraying the vision of our founders." The report was widely promoted by high-profile Senate Democrats on Wednesday, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.,...

A federal appeals court has backed California Gov. Gavin Newsom's stay-at-home order banning in-church services to blunt the spread of coronavirus, rejecting an argument from clerics that the governor is treading on their First Amendment right to free exercise of their religious beliefs.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell is an unabashed liberal, big donor to the Democratic Party, and a longtime friend of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a far-left Democrat from the judge’s home state of Rhode Island. McConnell owes his job to Whitehouse, who asked President Barack Obama to nominate him to become a federal judge. A recent CQ Roll Call investigation showed that McConnell gave about $500,000 to Democratic political committees before becoming a judge – more than any other judge nominated by Presidents Obama or Trump. Why should you care? Because McConnell sits on the Committee on Codes of Conduct of...

A three panel DC Appeals Court Panel, Judge Henderson, Judge Wilkins and Judge Rao have ordered Michael Flynn’s Judge, Emett Sullivan, to respond to the defense petition for a writ of mandamus within ten days: Quoting the U.S. vs Fokker ruling the panel is not responding directly to the Flynn petition with an immediate decision; instead they are requiring Judge Sullivan to explain his decision to engage with extra-party amicus actions despite the DOJ and Flynn defense agreement on the motion to dismiss. The order can be viewed as a smart move by the appeals panel because Judge Sullivan has...

Wilson might as well have been hatched in a Federalist Society lab; his lengthy political record reveals a deep commitment to Republicans’ political goals. Alliance for Justice, a progressive group that has opposed most of Trump’s judicial nominees, compiled a record of Wilson’s many controversial positions. Examples of his partisanship are not difficult to find. Wilson called Barack Obama “King Barack,” “petty and small,” “a fit-throwing teenager,” the “Anointed One,” a “radical leftist,” and “shrill, dishonest, and intellectually bankrupt.” He charged Obama with running the “most paranoid and politicized White House since Nixon.” He has also called Hillary Clinton “Crooked...

Donald Trump’s most lasting legacy will be his appointments to the federal bench. In his tenure so far, the Senate has confirmed 193 judges, 51 of whom were circuit judges. All were nominated by President Trump. Indeed, President Trump and the Senate have confirmed federal appellate judges faster than any other president in U.S. history. For all judges, President Trump’s rate is the second fastest. The Senate returns to Washington next week, and on the agenda is another stellar judicial nominee, Judge Justin Walker. Walker is the quintessential Trump appointee. He’s young, he has impeccable legal credentials, and he has...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Wednesday joined a growing chorus of Democrats calling on Senate Republicans to pause their efforts to confirm federal judges when the Senate returns on May 4 amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying the GOP seems less interested in passing further measures to combat the virus than they are in putting more of President Trump's nominees on the federal bench. "The GDP just had its biggest drop since the Great Recession, the United States has surpassed one million confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, and we still don’t have adequate testing," Schumer said in a statement....

On Saturday, American Thinker pointed out that Democrat-run jurisdictions, at both the state and the local level, seem to be enjoying a little too much the power that a public health emergency has put into their hands. One of the examples was the order Mayor Greg Fischer issued in Louisville, Kentucky. He banned all Easter services, including drive-ins, and explicitly instructed his police department to write down the license plate numbers of people attending a drive-in Easter Sunday service. The On Fire Christian Center sought an emergency temporary restraining order in the United States District Court for the Western District...