Progressive Groups Urge Democrats to Oppose Trump Judges (1)

Progressive judicial advocacy groups want Senate Democrats to oppose President Donald Trump’s forthcoming judicial appointment efforts, as he gets a second chance to further shape the federal judiciary with conservatives.

“Senate Democrats must use every tool in their arsenal to defend our federal courts and that starts with the bare minimum: voting NO on judicial nominees who will bolster the far-right’s effort to undermine our democracy and kneecap Americans’ civil and human rights,” Demand Justice said in a Friday memo.

The statement comes a day after Bloomberg Law reported that some Democratic senators have signaled they’re open to working with Trump on federal trial court vacancies in their home states.

Three district courts in states with two Democratic senators have openings waiting for Trump, and a fourth is scheduled to have one this year. They’re located in New York, California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

Democrats generally were willing to cooperate when it came to finding nominees for their home-state courts during the first Trump administration, when Republicans also controlled the majority.

“For the past four years, Republican Senators used every tool at their disposal to slow and block Biden’s judicial nominees in their states, resulting in Trump having nearly 50 judicial vacancies to fill when he was sworn into office,” Jake Faleschini, justice program director at Alliance for Justice, said over email. “It is unfathomable to me that Democrats would work with Republicans at all on judges after their Republican colleagues treated them with such contempt and bad faith. It’s like watching Charlie Brown with the football.”

Demand Justice stopped short of saying that Democrats should oppose all nominees, including in their home states, but said “we have no evidence to the contrary that we will see that the administration can be trusted to put forward nominees that will prioritize people over the law,” said Maggie Jo Buchanan, managing director of Demand Justice. “So that’s why it is really important in this moment, before judges are announced, before debate begins, to make that proactive case about what it means to be qualified to sit on our federal courts.”

The memo said that Democratic “capitulation to Trump’s extreme agenda was all too common” during his first administration and pointed to Senate Democrats’ voting records on his judicial picks.

Democratic senators still serving in the chamber on average voted to confirm 42%—or 97 out of 234—of Trump’s lifetime judicial nominees, according to a Demand Justice analysis. That’s compared to Republican senators overall who voted to confirm 14% or 32 of Joe Biden’s 235 life-tenured judges.

“In other words, Democratic senators voted to confirm Trump judges three times more often than Republican senators voted to confirm Biden judges judicial nominees,” the group said.

“Senators must not close their eyes to the damage done to the rule of law from Trump’s first set of nominees and prioritize so-called compromise over the interests of the country,” it said.