President Biden reached a milestone Wednesday by officially appointing 200 federal court judges, cementing a long-lasting impact on the nation’s judiciary, experts and lawmakers said.
Biden currently surpasses former President Trump, who has exerted significant influence in judicial appointments. Trump managed to get almost as many federal appellate judges confirmed as former President Obama before him, who notably had double the time.
‘Judges are important. These men and women have the power to uphold or roll back fundamental rights,” Biden said in a statement acknowledging his 200 appointments.
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Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called Biden’s nominees “the most political nominees I have ever seen nominated for the federal bench.”
“Joe Bidenlike Barack Obama before him, is determined to transform the federal judiciary and equip it with radical left-wing judges,” said Josh Hammer, senior advisor to the Article III Project.
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Biden and his colleagues in the Senate, majority leader Chuck SchumerD-N.Y., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., celebrated the achievement, specifically highlighting the racial, ethnic and gender diversity among his slate of appointments.
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“We’re making our courts more like America. It won’t just be partners, male white partners in fancy law firms. It’s much more diverse. And the court is better for it. It’s something we can all be proud of,” Schumer told his colleagues in remarks on the Senate floor.
“127 women, 125 people of color, more than twice as many women and more than three times as many people of color confirmed under the last administration,” he praised.
Carrie Severino, the president of the Judicial Crisis Network, told Fox News Digital that the judges “were not chosen because of their fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law.”
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“We’re going to have a lot of new political activists on the federal bench who believe judges should be super legislators,” Kennedy said.
“I’m confident these judges will be around for a while, just like ours,” said Senate Judiciary Committee member Lindsey Graham. “The next president will pick a lot of them too. So it is important that you win these elections.’
According to Severino, the 2024 elections will ultimately decide what the federal judiciary will look like for years to come.
“They are going to serve for a lifetime,” she noted. “The judiciary really benefits from the upcoming elections.”
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“While serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 2018, in the middle of President Trump’s term, I saw how courts can also be transformed for the better in the other direction,” Hammer said. The conservative group’s senior adviser also noted the importance of the elections in determining what the judiciary looks like.
Although Biden is currently surpassing Trump at the same point in his presidency, it is unclear whether he will be able to match the former president’s 234 confirmed judges by the end of his term.
Moreover, Biden has failed to match Trump’s appointments at the appellate level or to the Supreme Court. Trump saw three of his nominees confirmed to the Supreme Court, setting in motion a conservative-majority court that has ushered in landmark decisions such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
On the other hand, Biden has appointed one Supreme Court justice.
According to the Associated Press, the former president also has 51 judicial appointments to the appeals court. Biden has been able to confirm 42 judges at that level, but instead has a larger number of district judges than Trump.
Severino said that because of this disparity, Trump-appointed judges “have more impact.”
Source of original article: Biden surpasses Trump with 200 judges confirmed, increasing the impact on the courts
