Trump’s judge picks: ‘Not qualified,’ prolific bloggers

But Republican senators still get on board.

By SEUNG MIN KIM 10/17/2017 05:05 AM EDT Updated 10/18/2017 12:43 PM EDT

President Donald Trump has nominated 50 candidates to lifetime appointments to the federal bench — including a man who asserted transgender children were evidence of “Satan’s plan,” one deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association and a handful of prolific bloggers.

And the GOP has unanimously stuck by Trump’s judges. Senate Republicans have cleared judicial nominees at a comparatively rapid clip this year — even as the conservative base has complained they’re not moving fast enough — and are planning to pick up the pace even more in the coming months.

Among the more eyebrow-raising judges is Charles Goodwin, who has been nominated to the federal bench in Oklahoma. He is the first judicial nominee since 2006 to earn a “not qualified” label from the American Bar Association, which has screened judicial candidates since the 1950s. (It’s possible Barack Obama considered judges the ABA would have found “not qualified,” but his administration worked with the ABA to evaluate nominees before they were announced, something Trump has declined to do.)

Both of his Republican home-state senators, James Lankford and Jim Inhofe, say they’re still confident Goodwin is adequately qualified to serve on the bench and dismissed the ABA’s findings.