Donald Trump, of course, isn’t the president again quite yet. President Biden retains the presidency until next January, with the Democrats still in control of the U.S. Senate. However, Trump is already making demands for how things will go during the lame-duck period.
No need for Trump to endorse a candidate in the Senate GOP leader race when he can get all three of them to publicly bend to his demands pic.twitter.com/wUCkUDRnai
— bryan metzger (@metzgov) November 10, 2024
The New York Times reported Friday that Senate Democrats are planning a big push to confirm as many Biden-appointed judges to the federal bench, before the changeover to Republican control of the Senate and White House in January.
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Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), the Senate Majority Leader, indicated last week that he plans to “devote significant Senate floor time to seating more judges in the post-election session that begins next week.”
“We are going to get as many done as we can,” Schumer told the Times. There was even a push to get Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire during the lame duck, but she has indicated that isn’t happening.
However, Trump has declared that Biden’s final judicial nominees should be blocked.
“No Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE,” Trump said on X Sunday.
Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner. Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2024
Trump, in his final weeks in his first term as president — during which he was, of course, fighting the result of the 2020 election — he presided over the Senate confirmation of 14 judges. This went against established norms, as only 15 judges had been confirmed in lame-duck sessions going back to 1897. Among those confirmed in that session was Judge Aileen Cannon, who threw out the federal case related to Trump’s theft of classified documents.
Trump likely has no way of blocking such judicial confirmations, but will almost certainly keep an eye on which Republican Senators fight the confirmations the hardest.
The president-elect also made another demand in the same post: That any of the Senators seeking the Senate Majority Leader post “agree to Recess Appointments.” Per CNN, all of the Senators seeking the post quickly agreed to that demand.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune photo library.
