The Democrats have long charged Trump with packing the courts. But Biden is putting him to shame.
And now Biden is in hysterics after his court-packing plot was exposed.
The Left hated everything that Donald Trump did in office. It didn’t matter if it was just part of the job description or not.
They were just mad they lost the election and they never seemed to let it go.
Now Biden is trying to undo everything Trump did from the ground up.
And the Democratic incumbent already leads on one metric that will outlast both of their administrations.
Biden, like Trump, hopes that his nominees will make decisions that benefit his party during their mandates, and he has made a point of nominating female and minority candidates to key posts.
For most of April, the two were tied with 193 appointments each, but Biden reclaimed the lead earlier this week when the Senate confirmed Georgia Alexakis for a district judgeship in Illinois on Wednesday, giving him 194.
“I promised to have an administration that looks like America … a court that represents all the people,” Biden said on March 11 during a campaign speech in Atlanta. “Sixty-five percent of the judges I’ve appointed are women. Sixty-five percent are people of color. I’ve appointed more black women to the circuit courts than every other president in American history combined.”
While presidents have limited control over how many justices they nominate while in office (vacancies must be filled first), both parties acknowledge and highlight the importance of having their nominees approved as soon as feasible.
“Both parties now realize that judges can make life miserable, or not miserable, for different groups,” said Russell Wheeler, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “So they understand the importance of these nominations.”
Historically, Republicans were more concerned with the court, according to Wheeler, but Democrats have caught up and are now aggressively working on that department of government. He cited a number of opinions from the Trump-dominated U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit as evidence of the broad impact of judicial nominations.
While Biden now has an overall lead over Trump and may finish with more confirmed nominees, a closer examination may still give the former president an advantage.
Trump confirmed 51 appeals court judges, whereas Biden has 41 and may be unable to match that number.
Biden has an edge when it comes to district court judges, who are viewed as less powerful.
Of course, Trump confirmed three Supreme Court justices, while Biden has only one, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who succeeded Stephen Breyer, a fellow liberal justice.
Breyer resigned in response to widespread pressure from progressives who wanted a younger person to replace him, and Wheeler believes similar pressure may come from administration officials to older judges at lower levels, urging them to take senior status while opening up seats for new, younger nominees.
The Senate must confirm nominees anyway, and there is an informal “blue slip” mechanism in place that gives home-state senators effective veto power over justices who will serve in their state. That means Biden has had the best results in states with two Democratic senators.
Biden’s emphasis on diversity has ramifications for the race, as he frequently discusses creating a federal government that is more representative of society as a whole.
“You can probably count on two hands the number of white males that Biden has appointed,” Wheeler said. However, he added that the practice of hyping appointments from underrepresented backgrounds is not necessarily new, saying that former President George W. Bush spoke about the high number of Hispanic justices he appointed.
Biden has also prioritized applicants from diverse legal backgrounds, such as public defenders and labor lawyers, defying a longstanding trend of picking prosecutors or lawyers from big corporations.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, believes the Biden White House would continue to prioritize judicial selections and will continue the nomination process until the November election.
“I do think the White House is focused on those numbers, and they will do what they can,” he told reporters.
As his predecessor did, Biden will maintain the pressure because he recognizes the broad and long-term influence those nominations will have in the coming years.
“The federal judges have extraordinary power to declare the rights that people have,” Tobias said. “Even though they’re not policymakers, they are very important.”
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
