In late push, Senate Democrats narrowly top Trump on judicial confirmations

WASHINGTON – The Senate confirmed on Friday the 235th lifetime federal judge nominated by President Joe Biden, topping the four-year record set during the first Trump administration by a single judge in a drive that significantly reshaped the federal courts to be more ethnically and professionally diverse.

The approval of Serena Raquel Murillo of California to be a judge in the state’s central district wrapped up a push by Democrats to fill as many vacancies as possible on the bench before turning the majority over to Senate Republicans on Jan. 3.

Democrats celebrated not only the number of judges confirmed but also their varying ethnicities and legal experience compared with the long-standing practice by past presidents of both parties of installing mostly white former prosecutors and corporate lawyers.

“A quarter of all the judges are now on the federal bench from the four years we were here,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader, who called the judicial drive one of his most significant acts as leader. “It’s going to have a profound effect on people’s lives. This was an accomplishment that will last generations.”

The intense year-end effort means that President-elect Donald Trump will enter the White House with far fewer vacancies than in 2017, when he took office with more than 100 judgeships open after Republicans blocked the Obama administration from filling court seats, including one on the Supreme Court.

Trump could get more if Biden signs congressionally approved legislation that would create about two dozen new federal court slots for him to fill, but the White House has said he would veto that bill.

Democrats noted that they succeeded despite having to navigate an evenly split 50-50 Senate the first two years of the Biden administration and a 51-49 divide for most of the second two.

“The rules of the Judiciary Committee make it absolutely essential for every member to be present,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who managed the judicial confirmation effort as chair of the panel and praised fellow Democrats for their commitment. “If one member was absent, we had to postpone consideration of the nominees.”

Of the 235 judges, about two-thirds are women and about two-thirds are people of color. Biden named more Black women to judgeships than his predecessors, including more Black women to appellate court slots than all previous presidents combined. The group also includes the most former public defenders ever named – including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson – as well as a number of notable firsts such as the first Muslim American man and woman seated on the federal bench.

Democrats did come up short of Trump in some categories. Trump was presented with three Supreme Court vacancies to fill, while Biden had only one, to which he named Jackson. Trump also filled more seats on the influential appellate courts, 54 to 45, than Biden, allowing Trump to have more impact in determining the ideological breakdown on those crucial courts.

Progressive activists and some Democrats say Biden missed an opportunity to have more influence at the appellate level. They criticized a postelection deal by Schumer that took four appeals court seats off the table in exchange for Republicans smoothing the way for confirmation of the 15 lower-court nominees who have been approved over the last several weeks.

Schumer and other Democrats said that the four were unlikely to be confirmed, and that the trade-off allowed them to move multiple other nominees through without Republicans throwing up time-consuming procedural roadblocks.

“It was a no-brainer,” Schumer said of the agreement. “Anyone sitting in my chair would have made the same decision.” He said Democrats were disappointed that they could not get more circuit court confirmations, but “these didn’t have the votes.”

Republicans took issue with most of the Biden nominees, criticizing them as too liberal. But they gave grudging credit to Democrats, noting that they followed the Republican model emphasized by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, of making judicial confirmations a priority during Trump’s first term and devoting significant time to them.

The federal courts have increasingly become an arena for resolving political disputes, and McConnell saw the first Trump term as an opportunity to tilt them as far to the right as possible. Democrats saw their judicial project as a way to rebalance the courts.

“They took a page out of our playbook,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee. “Because that’s what Sen. McConnell and President Trump did during his first term in office. And I think Democrats saw that was pretty darn effective and decided to copy it.”

Cornyn said Republicans were ready to pick up where they left off in 2020.

“I think President Trump will have a chance to nominate one or maybe two Supreme Court justices, which would be unprecedented,” Cornyn said, noting that could mean a majority of the court would be named by Trump.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.