Mitch McConnell Plans To Change The Rules Again To Confirm Trump Judges

03/31/2019 02:24 pm ET Updated 8 hours ago


Mitch McConnell Plans To Change The Rules Again To Confirm Trump Judges


https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mitch-mcconnell-senate-rules-trump-judges_n_5ca0e902e4b0bc0dacaa2800?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004

The GOP leader, who blocked lots of Obama’s court picks, is ready to make it easier to confirm district judges now.




WASHINGTON ― He changed the rules to make it easier to confirm President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court picks. He tossed out Senate traditions to make it easier to confirm Trump’s circuit judges. So, naturally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants to adjust the rules again to make it easier to confirm the rest of Trump’s nominees to lifetime seats on federal courts.

The Senate will vote this week to reduce its debate time for most nominees ― district court judges and lower-level executive nominees ― from 30 hours to two hours. This will not apply to Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court nominees or circuit court nominees.

Without a whiff of irony, McConnell, whose greatest legacy is denying a Supreme Court seat and dozens of other federal court seats to President Barack Obama, said Thursday that the rule change is necessary because of Democrats’ “unprecedented obstruction” of Trump’s nominees.

“Obstruction for obstruction’s sake,” bemoaned McConnell, who was so Machiavellian about denying Obama the ability to confirm judges that he drove Republicans to block their own nominees and fueled a vacancy crisis on federal courts.

It would take 67 votes to make the rules change. All 45 Democrats, along with the two independent senators who caucus with them, are expected to vote against it. But the 53 Republicans could still get it done if they invoke the so-called “nuclear option,” a more confrontational approach that would allow them to change the rules with a simple majority, or 51 votes. It’s not clear if McConnell is prepared to go nuclear to make the change, but he’s previously suggested that he is.

Since Trump became president, McConnell has used the nuclear option to lower the vote threshold for confirming Supreme Court nominees from 60 to a simple majority. He’s also endorsed repeated violations of the “blue slip” rule, a Senate tradition of only moving forward with a judicial nominee when both of his or her home-state senators sign off on it.
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