Trump’s Desperate Last-Ditch Effort to Control the Courts
Written by Zack Ford
Senior Manager, Press and Editorial Communications
It’s clear that President Trump is expecting Republicans to lose control of the House and Senate, because he spent last three months trying to issue as many judicial nominations as he could. The Senate, in turn, has abandoned its precedents to squeeze in enough hearings to accommodate them all. There’s no reason they would be flailing like this unless they were worried that 2026 is the last chance a Republican-controlled Senate can rubber-stamp Trump’s extremist nominees.
Their desperation first became apparent as far back as August. That month, Trump nominated a total of 13 would-be federal judges, more than he’s ever nominated in a single month during this administration. As a comparison, it took four months from April to July to reach 13 judicial nominations. He also named nine nominees on August 18, more than he’s ever announced on the same day during this administration.
Trump had some months during his first administration when he named as many or more nominations (13 in September 2017, 17 in April 2018, and 17 in May 2018). He also had three individual days that beat his August 18 record (11 on September 7, 2017, 10 on April 12, 2018, and 10 on Mary 15, 2018). It’s important to note, however, that Trump had also inherited over 100 judicial vacancies thanks to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the Republican-controlled Senate refusing to confirm any of President Obama’s nominees at the end of his administration. His nomination of lower-court judges was also delayed by the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch — another seat McConnell kept open for him.
Since August, Trump has nominated a handful more judges, include two for circuit court vacancies. These nominations bring the total number of vacancies without a nominee down to 21 as of this writing. More importantly, only four of those are district court vacancies in red states where Trump would not need the blue-slip approval of a Democratic senator to advance a nomination. In fact, every district court nominee since August has targeted the remaining vacancies in states with two Republican senators. It’s clear he’s trying to get every last judge confirmed that he can before losing control of the Senate.
The Senate is likewise accelerating its confirmation process to try to get all of these nominations across the finish line before the term ends. The Senate Judiciary Committee has planned two hearings for November on back-to-back weeks, a significant break from precedent of only holding hearings on alternating weeks. A spokesman for Minority Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Nomination Notes that this change was made without Democrats’ consent but that it would establish a new precedent for the next time Democrats are in power.
This judicial desperation coincides with other reporting of the White House’s pre-election fear. Politico reported in August that many White House staff were leaving key positions the administration because they can see “the writing on the wall” — and perhaps because they do not want to face the scrutiny of congressional oversight that some Democratic lawmakers have promised if they win back control, up to and including impeachment. Trump himself has tried to skirt responsibility for potential losses by scapegoating his fellow Republicans instead. Meanwhile, he’s trying to bribe voters to keep Republicans in power, offering $5,000 payouts as he campaigns in deep red states that wouldn’t typically need a presidential boost of support.
If every one of the remaining nominees manages to cross the finish line before the end of 2026, that will bring Trump to a total of 78 Article III judges named during his second administration — far short of the 234 confirmed during his first term. Should Democrats win control of the Senate this year, the people will have clearly spoken that we reject the authoritarian, right-wing direction of the Trump administration. The new Senate Democratic leadership would be wise to make sure the number of judges climbs no higher, especially given the extremists Trump has been nominating.
Like so many of Trump’s other judicial nominees, these latest nominees demonstrate loyalty to the anti-democratic MAGA agenda. They include Lee Rudofsky, who Trump wants to promote to the Eighth Circuit after having nominated him to the district courts in his first term. Rudofsky became the first judge to gut a key mechanism for enforcing the Voting Rights Act, which Trump surely wants to reward him for.
There’s also Jesus Osete (Western District of Missouri), who has worked in Trump’s DOJ trying to fight California’s pro-Democratic redistricting and who previously worked against voting rights as Missouri’s deputy solicitor general. With lifetime appointments, the likes of Rudofsky and Osete will continue the work of the Trump administration long after the midterms and long after Trump is even alive.
If Democrats win the Senate this year and play by McConnell’s rules, however, they could become the last Trump judges ever confirmed. Senate Republicans may be racing to the finish line, but our democracy and our civil rights will be better off if they are indeed then stopped from adding any more judges to the bench.
