The Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate has launched a campaign aimed at confirming as many federal judges nominated by President Joe Biden as possible to prevent former President Donald Trump from filling vacancies after his inauguration on January 20. The Republicans will control the Senate from January 3 next year, so the Senate on Tuesday will vote to confirm one of Biden’s judicial nominees, former prosecutor April Perry.
April Perry is one of the 31 judicial nominees announced by Biden, waiting for confirmation by the Senate. She is one of the 17 candidates that have been reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and are awaiting final confirmation by the full Senate. Another 14 nominee candidates are awaiting committee review.
The U.S. Constitution gives the Senate the power to confirm lifetime appointments to federal judicial institutions nominated by the president.
Democrats in the Senate are under pressure to swiftly confirm the remaining nominees and any new nominees Biden may put forward in the final weeks of his term.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement, “We will do everything in our power to complete as many nominations as possible.”
During his presidency, Trump appointed 234 judges, including three Supreme Court justices, shifting the Court to a conservative majority of 6-3. Biden has appointed numerous liberal judges. Since taking office in 2021, President Biden has nominated 213 judicial candidates who have been confirmed by the Senate, including liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, with about two-thirds of them being women and minorities.
It remains to be seen how many nominations the Democratic Senators will ultimately confirm. Trump urged the Senate on Sunday to stop approving Biden’s nominations, claiming that Democrats are pushing through their judges.
Billionaire Elon Musk, a supporter of Trump, took to social media on Tuesday, stating that Biden’s judicial nominations are detrimental to the country. Mike Davis, an ally of Trump in the conservative judicial advocacy group Article III Project, urged Senate Republicans in another post to reject all judicial appointments before January next year.
Current Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s office declined to comment. McConnell has consistently opposed Biden’s nominees, while during his tenure as majority leader, he played a significant role in confirming Trump’s nominees.
Judicial nominations require a simple majority for confirmation. The Democrats currently hold a slim 51-49 majority, meaning that if Republicans strongly oppose Biden’s nominations and Democrats abstain or are absent, the nominations will not pass.
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, has stated that any nominee who doesn’t receive the support of at least one Republican won’t receive his vote.
Furthermore, the necessity of passing bills to avoid a government shutdown, such as spending bills, may also consume valuable time.
Biden’s allies believe that if they can work together to push through the confirmation of his remaining nominees, it will help advance his goal of diversifying federal judge positions, which have historically been dominated by white males.
Currently, he has yet to fill all judicial vacancies.
Last Friday, Biden announced his first post-election nominee, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who was appointed as a federal district judge for New York after an unsuccessful campaign for Manhattan District Attorney in the 2021 Democratic primary.
Senator Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, expressed his hope to confirm every potential nominee before the end of this Congress.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates pointed out on Monday that during Biden’s first term, the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed 18 judges before Biden won the 2020 election but hadn’t taken office yet.
Among the vacancies awaiting nominations are five influential federal appellate court judges. Republicans indicated before the election that they had enough votes to block the nominations of two of them, Adeel Mangi, who would be the first Muslim federal appellate court judge, and Ryan Park, a North Carolina Deputy Attorney General who had defended university race-conscious admissions policies before the Supreme Court, but without success.
In addition, Biden has selected another 26 people to serve as district court judges, including April Perry. A former prosecutor currently working at GE HealthCare in Chicago, Biden nominated her to be a judge in April, with her confirmation placing her on the bench of Illinois judges. Previously, Republican Senator JD Vance had blocked her appointment as Chicago’s Chief Federal Prosecutor.
Vance began stalling Biden’s nomination for the 2023 Department of Justice after Special Prosecutor Jack Smith obtained approval for the first of two federal indictments against Trump. Trump later selected Vance as his running mate for Vice President.