On July 10th, The New York Post posted an article about Whitney Hermandorfer, the first of President Trump’s judicial appointments to be confirmed this term.
The article reports:
The Senate on Thursday cleared the way to confirm the first judicial appointment of President Trump’s second term, marking a slower tempo than at the same point of both his first term and that of President Joe Biden’s.
By a 51-43 party-line vote, the Senate moved to conclude debate on Whitney Hermandorfer’s nod for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, teeing up an expected vote next week.
At this stage of Trump’s first term, the Senate had already confirmed two court nominees — Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Sixth Circuit Judge Amul Thapar.
By next week, that figure will shoot up to three, including US District of Idaho Judge David Nye, who was confirmed in July of 2017.
Meanwhile, former President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats had already wrangled through 14 judges at this stage of 2021.
The Democrats have decided to fight President Trump’s agenda through the courts and are probably going to drag their feet in confirming the President’s judicial nominees. This is one of many reasons that the Republicans need to gain Congressional seats in the mid-term elections.
The article notes:
In the past, confirmations used to be more cumbersome because they had to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster from the minority party. In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) used the nuclear option to eliminate that in most instances.
Republicans won back the Senate the following year.
Reconfiguring the ideological composition of the judiciary has been a key goal of administrations from both political parties. But the GOP-led Senate has been busy with other priorities as well.
Harry Reid was warned that using the nuclear option would come back to bite him in the future. It did. The Democrats were so used to being in the majority that they couldn’t envision losing that majority.