US President-elect Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) Gala at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, USA on November 14, 2024.
Carlos Barriareuter
President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday urged Senate Republicans to block Democrats from confirming any more of President Joe Biden’s attorney general nominees.
“Democrats are stacking the court with radical left-wing justices and trying to remove them,” Trump wrote. real social posts.
“Republican senators need to show up and hold their line. We don’t need to confirm any more judges by Inauguration Day!” he wrote.
Democrats will narrowly lose their Senate majority on January 3rd. President Trump is scheduled to take office on January 20th.
The Senate has approved 216 of Biden’s nominees for federal attorney general. The most recent addition, Judge Embry Kidd, was confirmed Monday to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Biden has recommended a total of 261 judicial nominees. The White House said: He announced his 56th candidacy in a November 8 press release.
There are currently 45 Total vacancies In the federal judiciary. This is less than half the number of job openings when President Trump took office in 2017.
Trump appointed 227 judges during his first term. Mr. Biden is on pace to outpace that number, with about 20 nominees currently awaiting final confirmation or being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
With time running out, Democrats are working overtime to seat Biden’s judges.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York) said: senate chamber On Tuesday morning, he announced that he had taken steps to confirm 12 more judges since last weekend.
“We’re not done yet. There are more judges to consider and confirm. We’ll spend the rest of this week and the rest of this year focused on confirming judges,” Schumer said.
Republicans may be able to slow Democratic efforts. They managed to create a several-hour delay Monday night by forcing a lengthy roll call vote on a trivial procedural motion that would normally take a fraction of the time.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R.S.D. ABC News He will continue to stall the nomination process.
“If Sen. Schumer thought that Senate Republicans, in the final weeks of the Democratic majority, would simply allow them to quickly approve lifetime appointments for several Biden-appointed judges, The idea was wrong,” Thun told ABC.
Some Democrats say they’re ready to fight.
“I was on the Senate floor until almost midnight last night voting to confirm President Biden’s judicial nominees,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote in X.
“We will continue to do this until time runs out to confirm as many qualified judges as possible and deliver to the people who elected us to uphold their values,” Murray wrote.
President Trump had previously demanded that “no judges should be confirmed” during the lame duck session.
President Trump: “As Republicans fight for leadership, Democrats are going after judges all the way. This is unacceptable.” I wrote He spoke on Truth Social on November 10, less than a week after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris and securing a second term.
At least two moderate Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, ignored the order. Voted for confirmation Some things Judge Biden will choose.
But many conservatives are listening to Mr. Trump and criticizing Senate Republicans on social media for their inaction on Democratic efforts to confirm the judge. They include right-wing influencer Mike Cernovich, conservative lawyer Mike Davis, and Grace Chong, who works on Trump ally Steve Bannon’s show “War Room.”
Chong tagged the senator Tuesday morning. JD Vance In a since-deleted post, Vice President-elect Trump of Ohio called on Republicans to “show up and do one damn thing!!”
Mr. Vance responded Tuesday afternoon that Mr. Chung was a “mouth-breathing idiot” and claimed that Mr. Biden’s latest nominee would have been confirmed whether or not he had shown up to vote. Vance later deleted his reply.
“At the time this vote in the 11th Circuit took place, I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple government positions, including the director of the FBI,” Vance wrote.
“I tend to think it’s more important for Republicans to get an FBI director who dismantles the deep state than it is to lose the vote 49-45, 49-46. But that It’s just me,” he wrote.
