US Senate Democrats rush to confirm judges before Trump takes office

Source: Aol/Reuters

November 12, 2024 at 1:42 PM


(Reuters) - The U.S. Senate's Democratic majority began a crusade on Tuesday to confirm as many new federal judges nominated by President Joe Biden as possible to avoid leaving vacancies that Republican Donald Trump could fill after taking office on Jan. 20. With Republicans set to take control of the chamber on Jan. 3, the Senate is set on Tuesday to hold a confirmation vote on one of Biden's judicial nominees - former prosecutor April Perry - for the first time since Trump won the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Perry was nominated by the Democratic president to serve as a U.S. district court judge in Illinois. All told, Biden has announced 31 judicial nominees who are awaiting Senate confirmation votes, including Perry. She is one of 17 who already have been reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and are awaiting a final confirmation vote by the full Senate. Another 14 nominees are awaiting committee review.

The U.S. Constitution assigns to the Senate the power to confirm a president's nominees for life-tenured seats on the federal judiciary. "We are going to get as many done as we can," Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. Trump made 234 judicial appointments during his first four years in office, the second most of any president in a single term, and succeeded in moving the judiciary rightward - including building a 6-3 conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court with three appointees.

Biden has appointed a host of liberal judges. Since the beginning of his presidency in 2021, the Senate has confirmed 213 Biden judicial nominees, including liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. About two-thirds were women, and the same share were racial minorities.

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