President-Elect Trump said the Senate should stop confirming President Biden’s judicial nominees to lifetime positions on the federal bench.
Trump posted on Truth Social, “The Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door.”
Votes on judges are scheduled by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The Judiciary Committee sends nominees to the floor. As long as Democrats have a simple majority, they can confirm as many judges as time allows between now and January 2. According to the Judicial Conference there are 15 pending nominations. In addition, there are a few more still in committee.
Judiciary Committee member Senator Mike Lee wrote in response to Trump’s post: “Senate Republicans need to do everything we can to stop the confirmation of horrible Biden-appointed judges.”
Republicans did delay the confirmation process Monday night, keeping the Senate in session until midnight. But the procedural moves did not bring progress to a total halt.
Here’s how Senator Josh Hawley described what happened.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO: “Chuck Schumer filed on three judicial nominees on Thursday, then he came back in yesterday with no notice and said, actually, I want to do whatever eight or nine more and jam them through the Senate. That’s not our normal process. So, hey, you actually have to have consent to go from the legislative calendar to the executive calendar in order to file these nominees. So what you saw is Republicans saying, well, we’re not just going to give you blanket consent.”
Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ: “Last night did nothing for nobody. Just kept a bunch of Senators up till up till midnight. It was a ridiculous display. We Donald Trump had put a record number of judges when he was here. We challenged some, we did some, but we didn’t do we didn’t do things like that.”
So far the Senate has confirmed 218 of President Biden’s nominees. President Trump had 234 confirmations during his first term. Democrats say they will do everything they can to tie or surpass him.