Still another reason to mourn Trump's defeat

swamp monsters die hard

Democrats Build Back Biased Courts With Pseudo-Retirements and Record Appointments

… President Trump did not disappoint. Together with then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), he set up a conservative judge-confirmation machine. The Pew Research Center says that Donald Trump “appointed more than 200 judges to the federal bench, including nearly as many powerful federal appeals court judges in four years as Barack Obama appointed in eight.” Trump judges have been instrumental in resisting leftist urges to fundamentally transform the country and keep America alive to fight another day. Just this year, Trump judges have blocked vaccine mandates and reinstated “Remain in Mexico” immigration controls.

While Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court were widely covered … he really proved his worth with appellate court justice appointments. In his single, four-year term, Trump put 54 justices on appellate court benches. In contrast, Obama only seated 55 appeals judges over his two terms. Overall, at the end of his single term, Trump had placed a total of 234 justices on the federal courts (Supreme, appeals, and district); in their two terms, each of the presidents before Trump seated 320 judges (Obama) and 322 judges (Bush). The Trump-McConnell appointment pace was unmatched over the past six administrations.

But sadly, Big Left was able to oust the fabulously successful President Trump from office in 2020. Now, with their preposterous occupancy of the White House and fragile control of the Senate, Democrats are working hard to undo the Republicans’ progress in the arena of the federal courts. Reuters is reporting that “President Joe Biden is wrapping up 2021 with more judges confirmed to the federal bench than any first-year president since Ronald Reagan, and experts say a growing list of judicial vacancies could allow him to appoint even more in 2022.”

The Senate confirmed 40 of Biden’s judicial nominees, including 11 appellate picks, despite early concerns among progressives that he would lack opportunities to fill seats on nation’s 13 circuit courts.

While Trump inherited 17 vacancies at the start of his term, Biden only had two. However, older liberal justices — perhaps mindful of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s faux pas of dying on the bench while Republicans were in the appointing chair — have been going into semi-retirement by taking senior status.

Ballotpedia explains senior status thusly:

Senior status is a classification for federal judges at all levels who are semi-retired. Senior judges are Article III judges who, having met eligibility through age and service requirements, continue to serve on federal courts while hearing a reduced number of cases. According to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, senior judges “typically handle about 15 percent of the federal courts’ workload annually.” In his 2016 annual report on the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John G. Robertsnoted that senior judges “are eligible for retirement with full pay but still continue to work—most in a part-time capacity, but many full-time—without additional compensation.”

So aging leftist jurists can get a two-fer: their “retirement” frees up a seat for their like-minded Democrats to fill, while at the same time, they can continue on the bench, issuing the same edicts that they did before.

Sad.

Related: Federal judge rules that prosecuting once-deported illegal aliens caught after reentering the country is “racist and unconstitutional”. As the author points out, if judges and other fellow Democrats thought that these criminals would end up voting for Republicans, they’d be seized at the border and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.