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This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 84 judges confirmed. 53 District Court judges 29 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices This week Senator Jeff Flake said he will not vote to confirm (either in Judiciary or on the floor) any further judges until a bill to protect Robert Mueller is voted on. McConnell killed such a bill and Senator John Barasso of Wyoming said that the Senate will confirm judges with or without Jeff Flake. On January 3rd, this obstacle to conservatism will be off the Judiciary Committee and out of the Senate and confirmations will...

Republican senator insists there is no threat to the special counsel after Sen. Flake threatens to oppose judicial nominees until a vote on legislation to protect Mueller.

Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, said Wednesday GOP senators will work through New Years Eve to confirm all of President Trump’s pending judicial nominees before the end of the year if Democrats try to obstruct the confirmation votes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, has made it a priority to remake the federal bench with a conservative bent, and has more than 40 judicial nominees awaiting floor votes. Before leaving Capitol Hill prior to the midterms, Republicans vowed to get them all confirmed once they returned during the lame duck session before the incoming Congress begins in January. “I...

President Trump announced Tuesday he is nominating Neomi Rao to fill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s vacant seat on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Rao currently serves as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). She is a vocal advocate of Trump’s efforts to slash government regulations, crediting them with stimulating job growth. “I think the reform efforts are part of what has stimulated economic growth and job creation and promoted technological innovation. And from my perspective, our reform efforts have really focused on promoting the rule of law and emphasized the...

This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 84 judges confirmed. 53 District Court judges 29 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices

Democrats boycotted Wednesday’s hearing on another slate of President Trump’s judicial nominees, continuing their attempts to hinder Republicans’ plans to stock the courts with an army of conservative judges. The Judiciary Committee heard from four nominees, including two picks for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most liberal panels in the country and long a target for Republicans who complain of activist liberal judges. Wednesday’s boycott is the second in a row after Democrats refused to show for a hearing last week on other court picks. Democrats say it is unprecedented to hold hearings on judges...

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Tuesday said that she will not return her "blue slip" on a judicial pick from President Trump and urged the Judiciary Committee to delay a hearing on the nomination. Murray said in a statement that Republicans "have been trampling" on Senate precedent in order to place "extreme conservatives" on the courts, adding that she cannot be "complicit." "This needs to end. So I am not going to be complicit in this latest rushed process to load the courts with Trump nominees in the lame duck session and I will not be returning the blue slip...

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats struck a deal last week with Republicans that saw the quick confirmation of 15 more conservative judges in exchange for a rapid flight to the campaign trail. Liberal activists were infuriated, but after the brutally divisive fight to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the agreement held out a promise of peace. “I would like to have the future mending things,” declared the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. On Wednesday, at Mr. Grassley’s instruction, the armistice collapsed. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee convened yet another hearing to consider still...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley told committee Democrats Monday that he would move forward with two hearings for judicial nominees during the congressional recess despite their objections. "It's unfair to the nominees, who have already flown to Washington D.C. and made travel arrangements for their families to further delay this hearing," Grassley said in his letter to the committee's top Democrat, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, pointing to previous postponements for hearings. "And it's unfair to the American people." "As a result of Democratic delay tactics, there are now 154 current and future judicial vacancies, 63 of which are classified...

President Donald Trump gave unusually strong praise for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his role in Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court at a rally in Richmond, Kentucky, Saturday evening. "There's nobody tougher, there's nobody smarter," Trump said of McConnell to a cheering crowd of some 6,000 supporters in the senator's home state. "He stared down the angry left-wing mob." McConnell briefly took the stage and praised Trump for his judicial nominations, asking him to keep it up. Trump said that Democrats "demonized" Kavanaugh before knowing anything about him. "What happened to him was so unfair, I've...

Republicans are ecstatic and Democrats are livid about Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation as a Supreme Court justice. But while the Supreme Court is important, many Americans tend to exaggerate its powers. Democrats still firmly control the nation’s district courts and circuit courts of appeals, where virtually all federal judicial decisions are made. Even if Republicans keep control of the Senate in the Nov. 6 midterm elections, the balance of power on these courts isn't going to change in the next two years. The Supreme Court grants oral arguments to about 80 cases a year. The nation’s highest court decides another...

This will be a weekly post. Count is now 84. 53 District Court judges 29 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices 10% of the Judiciary are now Trump appointees!

After months of negotiations and delays, the White House is moving to fill California’s three vacancies on the influential 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — over the strenuous objections of the state’s two Democratic senators.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is about to become about ten percent less crazy.  President Trump has nominated three new judges for the 29-seat circuit court, over the objections of the two senators representing their home state of California.  Until Trump discarded the practice, home state senators were allowed to veto judicial nominations for courts in their states, a custom known as the "blue slip."  That seems quaint these days, a relic of a bygone era in which actual qualifications, not ideology, were the issue in Senate confirmation votes that, anyway, required a filibuster-proof 60 votes.As a result, President Trump and...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., insists he’ll move to confirm all President Trump’s judicial nominees by the end of the year to eliminate a backlog caused by Democratic delay tactics. “We are not going to leave any judges behind at the end of the year, when we get through this Congress,” McConnell told the Washington Examiner Thursday. Senate Democrats and GOP lawmakers struck a bipartisan deal to confirm a slate of 15 judges on Thursday, which McConnell sees as a down payment for work later this year. Thursday's action left 34 nominees still waiting to be confirmed after getting...

The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee blasted the White House Thursday for picking nominees for the West Coast’s appeals court without consulting her, and saying one of the three doesn’t have any judicial experience. President Trump named a new slate of court picks Wednesday, including three judges to sit on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. But Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California objected, saying she had tried to consult with the White House but was rebuffed. She said she would withhold her blue slip, in a signal that she doesn’t acquiesce to the picks. Blue slips are a...

After months of negotiations and delays, the White House is moving to fill California’s three vacancies on the influential 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — over the strenuous objections of the state’s two Democratic senators. President Trump’s nominees for the appeals court — litigators Daniel Collins and Kenneth Lee and Assistant United States Attorney Patrick Bumatay — are all based in Southern California, are prominent members of the conservative Federalist Society, and have worked for Republican administrations. None of the three were approved by Feinstein or Harris via a process known as a “blue slip,” the senators’ offices confirmed...

The Senate confirmed 15 of President Trump’s judicial picks Thursday night after GOP leaders reached a deal with Democrats, clearing about a third of the backlog and closing up shop through Election Day to give senators a chance to campaign. Three of the judges are for the powerful circuit courts of appeals, while the other 12 were for district court positions.

Minutes after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Kannon Shanmugam took to Twitter to publicly congratulate the new justice. Shanmugam’s tweet highlighted a July post in which the Williams & Connolly appellate partner congratulated Kavanaugh on his nomination to the high court. He gave similar congratulations to Justice Neil Gorsuch following his confirmation last year. Shanmugam, with at least three cases at the Supreme Court this term, has no shortage of business coming before Kavanaugh—unless the former clerk to Antonin Scalia gets a new gig. Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court—he takes the bench Tuesday as a...

This will be a weekly post. This afternoon, the count will be 69. 41 District court judges 26 Circuit court judges 2 Supreme Court justices