December 28, 2024
Quietly last week the Senate confirmed the 235th federal judge under President Biden. That means under Biden more federal judges have been appointed and confirmed than have been in decades. It also means Biden beat trump’s record. Biden now has 235 judges and trump had 234.
I’m going to tell you what that means for all of us in a second but according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who led this charge — he says all these new confirmed judges will make the federal judiciary more ideologically balanced and not leaning on the conservative side. Plus Schumer and Biden have said these 235 new federal judges are “professionally diverse.” They include public defenders, civil rights lawyers and local judges. And Schumer said these judges were also demographically diverse. He said the Senate confirmed a “record number” of women, black, Latino, AAPI, Native American, Muslim American and LGBTQ judges.
In the end — Biden will likely leave office securing one Supreme Court justice, Katanji Brown Jackson, 45 federal appeals court judges, 187 federal district court judges and two other federal judges to the US court of international trade.
There is no question that during Trump’s first term and with the significant help of then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – the two of them – with the help of the then republican controlled senate — were able to remake the landscape of the federal judiciary. Of course most significantly was the fact that Trump and McConnell were able to appoint and confirm a conservative super majority to the united states supreme court. What just happened with these 235 judges under Biden will not change that fact.
So what do all these new Biden federal judges mean for all of us?
Well – federal judges no matter where they sit in the United States are extremely powerful. And they hold their seat on the federal bench for life. Any one of them has the power to stop laws that were passed by congress. They have the power to stop executive orders issued by the president and they have the power to absolutely stop rules created by the administration. And you’ve seen it in action. I’ve covered lots of things President Biden has tried to accomplish in his term from student loan forgiveness, to overtime rules to immigration policy that a federal judge has blocked. And that priority of Biden’s never came to fruition. The same thing happened when trump was in office I covered all of it on this page. And now that Trump is coming back to the White House we can expect all these judges will be very busy.
More from the White House here.
