The Judicial Confirmation Battle: Trump Decisively Defeated Biden, But Much Work Remains

On December 20, the Senate confirmed President Biden’s 235th Article III judge, surpassing President Trump’s 234 confirmations. Of course, anything that diminishes President Trump will receive rave reviews from members of the left and the corporate media who learned nothing from his decisive election victory.

Despite Biden’s slight edge in judicial confirmations, Trump’s record is stronger overall. President Biden obtained his one-judge margin on the back of his district court confirmations; he bested President Trump 187-174 in that department. District courts are the lowest level of Article III judges. Their decisions usually receive review from courts of appeals.

However, Biden used a procedural trick to inflate his judicial appointment numbers. The Senate uses a tradition known as the blue slip process. Each nominee must receive the return of a blue slip of paper from the senators of the nominee’s home state that indicates the senators’ support; otherwise, the nomination will not proceed in the Senate.

About 150 of the 187 Biden district court nominees came from states with at least one Democrat senator. Thanks to the blue slip policy, senators have enormous power over who receives district judgeships, and there is no doubt that leftist senators would have blocked Trump nominees in leftist wastelands like California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. President Biden secured nearly three dozen confirmations of California district judges alone.

President Trump outperformed President Biden by a 54-45 margin on circuit court confirmations. This margin increases when one takes into account the Federal Circuit. President Biden appointed two judges to that court, whereas President Trump’s circuit appointments were to the far more crucial D.C. Circuit and the 11 other circuits. President Biden only replaced 9 appointees of Republican presidents on appellate courts, whereas President Trump replaced 19 appointees of Democrat presidents. President Trump also transformed the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit into a much more moderate court with 10 appointees, whereas President Biden did not transform any circuit into a liberal domain.

The coup de grace, however, concerns the Supreme Court, the nation’s highest judicial bench. In President Biden’s sole appointment, he replaced one leftist, Justice Stephen Breyer, with another, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. President Trump, however, cemented his legacy by appointing three justices—first replacing conservative juggernaut Justice Antonin Scalia with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch. Then, President Trump replaced the Court’s pivotal swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, with conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Finally, President Trump replaced liberal lion Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who cast the deciding vote in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), joining Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to overrule the constitutional abomination that was Roe v. Wade (1973). It is crucial to highlight that the time required to confirm three Supreme Court justices far exceeded the time needed to confirm one. This essential expenditure of Executive Branch and Senate time diminished the available time to confirm inferior court judges.

And the best is yet to come. President Trump may have the opportunity to appoint one, two, or perhaps even three more justices. Should he do so, only Presidents Washington and Franklin Roosevelt would have appointed more. President Reagan holds the record for circuit court appointments with 83, and President Trump has an excellent chance of shattering it. President Trump also can appoint many more district judges in this term, thanks to a little-noticed event that occurred on April 3, 2019.

Throughout the first two years of President Trump’s term, Senate Democrats stalled the Senate, forcing up to 30 hours of debate on each district court nominee. As a result, only 53 won confirmation. Republicans finally had enough and orchestrated a change in Senate precedent that reduced the time for debate on each nominee to two hours. Thanks to the change in debate rules, Trump’s district court confirmations accelerated, with 121 confirmed after the implementation of the two-hour limit. This change will give Trump a shot to fundamentally transform the district courts nationwide.

The Senate helped President Biden push through a final salvo of leftist judges after President Trump’s decisive election victory. President Biden can shuffle his victory lap after the end of one of the worst presidencies in American history about his judicial confirmation “achievements,” but, like the rest of his presidency, these so-called accomplishments do not approach President Trump’s.

On January 20, President Trump resumed his leadership of a renaissance of judicial conservatism that was dormant for the last four miserable years. The Article III Project began in 2019 with a simple goal: to promote the confirmation and defense of constitutionalist judicial nominees, after I saw the weakness and recklessness of key outside groups on the right during the contentious fight to confirm Justice Kavanaugh.

For the next four years, we will dedicate ourselves to highlighting quality candidates for President Trump’s careful consideration and defend his nominees from leftist attacks. January 20 marked the revving up of our never-ending effort to make American law great again.

Mike Davis is the Founder and President of the Article III Project.