Carl Huse wrote recently in the New York Times that President Biden and Senate Democrats "have transformed the Senate into a judicial confirmation factory."
Indeed, President Biden has now seen 136 federal judges confirmed - more judicial confirmations than Presidents Trump, Obama, and George W. Bush up to this point in their presidencies. He's done it against the backdrop of a closely divided Senate. The President also recently hit 100 district court confirmations. But it's not just about the numbers.
Michael Tomasky wrote last week in the New Republic: "More meaningful than the number is the type, as two-thirds of those nominees are women and two-thirds are people of color. Many are from plainly progressive backgrounds in the law. In just the last month or so, these judges are among those confirmed:
- Nusrat Choudhury, the first Muslim American woman (and first Bangladeshi woman) to be named to the federal bench; a civil rights lawyer with the ACLU
- Natasha Merle, an African American woman out of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund
- Dale Ho, an Asian American voting rights attorney
- Casey Pitts, an openly LGBTQ labor lawyer
- Hernán Vera, a Latino former staff attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund"
The success to date is no accident.
Jennifer Bendery wrote over the weekend in HuffPost that "Joe Biden, a former longtime chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made judicial nominations a top priority before he was even sworn in as president." And since being sworn in, the President, Leader Schumer, and Chairman Durbin have moved swiftly to confirm a historic number of highly-qualified, civil rights attorneys and public defenders. Just look at the last three weeks:
"Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) lined up and confirmed six of Biden's most trailblazing judicial nominees to date, some of whom are certainly contenders for future Supreme Court seats. All are civil rights attorneys. All have been priorities for progressive judicial advocacy groups. All are relatively young, meaning they likely have decades ahead of them in their lifetime appointments. And all bring badly needed diversity to the federal bench."
President Biden promised the American people he would make upholding the rule of law with deeply qualified judicial nominees who represent the diversity of our nation a core priority. Fulfilling that pledge is one of his proudest accomplishments. The Biden-Harris pace of judicial confirmations has surpassed the last three presidencies while shattering all previous records when it comes to making the federal bench look like America.
The President is determined to keep driving forward with more barrier-breaking nominees.
