Thread by @jbendery

Good morning! ☕ Trump's presidency is ending in a few weeks. But the more than 230 people he put into lifetime federal judgeships will be shaping the nation’s law for decades.

Most of them are white, male, right-wing ideologues. huffpost.com/entry/donald-t…

How will our federal courts look different after Trump is gone? He has confirmed...

3 Supreme Court justices
54 appeals court judges
174 district court judges
3 judges on Court of Intl Trade

All are lifetime appts.

Compared to recent past presidents, Trump has confirmed more lifetime federal judges than Barack Obama (175), George W. Bush (206) and Bill Clinton (204) did in their first terms.

How did he get so many judges confirmed?

Mitch McConnell.

Not only did McConnell make confirming Trump's judges his #1 priority, but he blocked Obama's court picks for years so he could keep those seats vacant for a future GOP president to fill. Enter Trump.

“What McConnell has wanted is courts that will be here for decades after voters have rejected Republicans, if that’s what happens," @NormOrnstein told me. "Courts that would themselves be extremely activist in blowing up .. the ability of the federal govt to do much of anything."

Here's a staggering statistic about Trump's (McConnell's) judicial legacy: he is leaving office having filled almost every vacancy on an appeals court.

Put another way: Nearly 1 in every 3 appeals court judges is now a Trump pick. Lifetime appts.

“What we’ve seen is not just Trump appointing a lot of judges, which everybody talks about, but his bulldozer-like occupation with filling courts of appeals,” said Russell Wheeler of the Brookings Institution.

"They don’t have any appeals court seats left to fill.”

A word about US appeals courts. They are not as sexy as the Supreme Court. But they are incredibly powerful. They are where most federal law is settled on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration.

SCOTUS resolves ~100 cases a year.

Appeals courts resolve ~50,000.

Also notable about Trump's judges, especially his appeals court judges: they are super young. Many in their 30s, 40s.

"You’re going to have some of these people around forever," said Carl Tobias, a judicial nominations expert at the Univ of Richmond.

Trump’s judges are also very homogenous, particularly his picks for appeals courts. Think dozens of clones of Vice President Mike Pence: white, male, right-wing ideologues.

Not a single one of his 54 appeals court judges is Black.

And then there's the benchmark of just being qualified to be a lifetime federal judge. Ten of Trump's court picks were rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Assn.

For context: None of Obama’s court picks got this rating in 8 yrs. Six of GWB's picks got this rating in 8 yrs.

Senate GOPers confirmed most of these unqualified people anyway.

The most recent: now-U.S. district judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle. At 33, she doesn’t meet ABA’s req that a lifetime judge have at least 12 yrs experience practicing law.

She has 8 yrs. Never tried a case.

Of course, Trump didn’t pick these nominees himself.

They were fed to him by The Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that uses dark $ to get its members federal judgeships.

All 3 of Trump’s SCOTUS picks are members.
Nearly all 54 of his appeals court picks are too.

Federal judges who are members of the The Federalist Society have something else in common.

They all tend to have records of being hostile to abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights and/or the Affordable Care Act. huffpost.com/entry/trump-co…

I talked to judicial experts about how Biden can/should proceed with his judicial nominations. He's said he wants a more progressive and diverse mix of nominees.

But there's a very good chance McConnell will remain Senate majority leader.

That's... a problem.

“I don’t think McConnell is likely to confirm many of Biden’s nominees at all,” said Russell Wheeler of Brookings. “Some people have said that maybe Joe and Mitch would get together, these old buddies ... are going to work things out. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

It's not just McConnell being obstructionist. Virtually all Senate GOPers routinely voted to block Obama's judicial picks, too.

"The stain here on the confirmation process ... is prevalent across the entire Republican Senate body. Every single one of them," said @NormOrnstein.

This thread must end. Am I desperate for human interaction? Yes.

Here's the full piece. My guess is Biden will have to compromise a lot to get judges thru if McConnell holds the Senate (likely).

“It might not be pretty but it might fill up the courts.”
huffpost.com/entry/donald-t…