Thread by @bansisharma

1. WSJ: Trump’s Era of Judicial Excellence

Leftists say the President assaults the rule of law but acknowledge he’s appointed a highly qualified group to defend it.

2. Most media pundits have given up trying to make the case that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian tyrant. Now they must grudgingly admit how much he’s done to bolster the rule of law.

3. Mr. Trump’s appointments to the federal judiciary are remarkable for both their quality and their quantity. By the numbers, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Senate colleagues have just confirmed the President’s 50th addition to the federal appellate courts.

4. By the way, federal appellate courts are just as important as the Supreme Court in their influence on important policy issues that have a wide ranging impact on our nation.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor once remarked, “the court of appeals is where policy is made.”

5. Mr. Trump may be known for his exuberant salesmanship in describing people and programs as “fantastic” and “beautiful.” But in this case, if he wants to claim that he’s appointed the most impressive group of judicial nominees in the last century, he’s got a point.

6. Take it from a committed leftist. Writing this week in Vox, Ian Millhiser takes absolutely no pleasure in acknowledging the strength of Trump judicial picks.

7. Millhiser writes, "In less than three years as president, President Trump has done nearly as much to shape the courts as President Obama did in eight years."

8. Millhiser continues, "Trump hasn’t simply given lots of lifetime appointments to lots of lawyers. He’s filled the bench with some of the smartest, and some of the most ideologically reliable, men and women to be found in the conservative movement."

9. "Long after Trump leaves office, these judges will shape American law. On the courts of appeal, the final word in the overwhelming majority of federal cases, more than one-quarter of active judges are Trump appointees." -- Ian Millhiser

10. Millhiser continues his lament thus: "It’s tempting to assume that Trump’s judicial appointees share the goonish incompetence of the man who placed them on the bench, but this assumption could not be more wrong."

11. Millhiser: "Trump's picks include leading academics, Supreme Court litigators, and already prominent judges who now enjoy even more power within the judiciary."

12. "There’s no completely objective way to measure legal ability, but a common metric used by legal employers to identify the most gifted lawyers is whether those lawyers secured a federal clerkship, including the most prestigious clerkships at the Supreme Court."

13. " Roughly 40% of Trump’s appellate nominees clerked for a Supreme Court justice, and about 80% clerked on a federal court of appeals. That compares to less than a quarter of Obama’s nominees who clerked on the SCOTUS, and less than half with a federal appellate clerkship."

14. "In other words, based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president’s nominees. And they’re younger, too -- a full 10 years younger than average age of Obama's circuit appointees."

15. There is simply no recent precedent for one president having such a transformative impact on the courts. Amen!

The End

Mitch McConnell remains underappreciated for what he does in pushing the parliamentary envelope to the edge. Conservatives owe McConnell a huge debt of gratitude, even as Democrats have a genuine grouse about his parliamentary hardball.

Let us not forget, even McConnell would not have been successful in giving Trump so many judicial victories, had Reid not eliminated filibuster for judicial confirmations. Have Democrats ever trashed an institutional precedent for expedience that they did not live to regret?

Democrats will rue the day they tried to impeach a duly elected president without establishing any crime having been committed. Just you watch!

Unfortunately, the nation will suffer too. Nancy Pelosi's capitulation to the leftists in her caucus will prove to be far more harmful.