Mitch McConnell Is Spending the Shutdown Confirming More Trump Judges

Mitch McConnell Is Spending the Shutdown Confirming More Trump Judges

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/01/mcconnell-shutdown-judge-confirmations-trump.html


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After a record-shattering 84 confirmed judges, last week the Trump administration put forth its first new slate of names for federal judgeships in 2019. All six were men, and apparently all six were white, although the White House declined to answer any questions about their backgrounds.



Senate Republicans have also apparently been mulling the idea of a rules change that would allow them to move even faster on judicial nominations, with Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, telling Hugh Hewitt on Monday that the GOP conference may soon consider different ideas for ways to cut down debate time on Trump’s mountain of judicial nominees. The government shutdown has now dragged into its 33rd day, but the Republican obsession with jamming judges through continues to comically accelerate


The interest in ramming judges through has only picked up since the midterm elections. “If the Democrats had acquired a majority in the Senate, they could have blocked every person President Trump nominated for federal judgeships,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote in an op-ed post-election, noting that judicial appointments were “the biggest achievement of Trump’s first two years, and now it is likely guaranteed to continue.” Carrie Severino, the chief counsel and policy director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, told Politico at the time that “Executive orders don’t outlast the president, legislation can change, but these judgeships last a long time,” adding that there are “a lot of Never-Trumpers and conservatives who have had to admit, sometimes begrudgingly, that ‘Wow, this has been a home run.’ ”



The unprecedented number of conservative-approved judicial nominees McConnell has waved through the Senate—a process for which he laid the groundwork before Trump was elected—stands to shift much of the burden of conservative policymaking away from an increasingly paralyzed Senate. In the coming years, battles over voting rights, health care, abortion, regulation and campaign finance, among other areas, are less likely to be decided in Congress than in the nation’s courthouses. In effect, McConnell has become a master of the Senate by figuring out how to route the Republican agenda around it.


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But while progressives still hope that an independent judiciary will act as a check on Donald Trump, McConnell is taking a longer view—doing something rather more apocalyptic and decidedly more cynical. He continues to pack the judicial branch with extremely young, radically conservative white Christian men who will—assuming constitutional democracy survives—continue to deliver wins on gun rights and anti-abortion rights as well as the deregulation of environmental, consumer, labor, and other safeguards, long after Trump leaves office. These picks will also continue to work to circumscribe the vote itself, through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and limitless money in politics.


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