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WASHINGTON (CN) — Senate Democrats are bracing for a few more marathon voting sessions this week as Republicans continue to stand in the way of a raft of judicial confirmations, party leadership said Tuesday.
With President-elect Donald Trump set to take the White House in January and Republican Senate majority waiting in the wings, Democrats are in a dead sprint to confirm a backlog of President Joe Biden’s pending court appointments.
But the final push to surpass the first Trump administration’s judicial confirmation numbers is facing roadblocks from Senate Republicans bent on making the process as painful as possible.
While GOP lawmakers largely have no way of preventing the Biden administration’s remaining judges from getting confirmed by the Democratic Senate, they have slowed things down significantly — mainly by forcing roll call votes on procedural measures, needed to confirm nominees, that usually pass the chamber on voice votes.
That tactic forced senators to remain on Capitol Hill well into the evening Monday, as Democrats punched through a group of nine Biden nominees. All the jurists were confirmed despite the GOP’s delay tactics.
And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has warned that such a dynamic was likely to continue into the rest of the week, telling reporters during a news conference Tuesday that lawmakers should be prepared for another late night on Wednesday as Democrats try to confirm as many judges as possible.
“We’ll keep working to confirm these lifetime appointments,” he said. “It’s far too important, and we’re not going to let anything stand in our way.”
Democrats are quickly running out of time to finish working through their slate of pending judges. The Senate is scheduled to recess for Thanksgiving break next week and won’t return until Nov. 29. Lawmakers will then have just a few weeks, until Dec. 20, to finish that push — all while contending with other unavoidable issues such as defense spending and the federal budget.
If Democrats hope to surpass Trump’s confirmation figures, they may be forced to call weekend voting sessions or hold more evening votes. But Schumer wouldn’t say Tuesday whether party leadership is considering such contingencies.
“We are doing everything we can to get as many judges confirmed as we can,” he told reporters.
Republicans, meanwhile, were apoplectic with Democrats who they said were prioritizing Biden’s judicial legacy over other pressing topics such as the looming lapse in federal appropriations in December.
“After last night’s voting extravaganza, I wonder, what are we doing?” said West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito at a GOP news conference Tuesday, arguing that the Senate has for months been sitting on approving the National Defense Authorization Act and a raft of appropriations bills.
“And yet, last night, we were sitting around voting time and time again for these liberal judges that Chuck Schumer wants to ram through at the last minute before the balance of power shifts,” Capito said.
Trump has urged Senate Republicans to block Biden’s remaining judicial confirmations as recently as Tuesday, writing on his social media platform Truth Social that Democrats were trying to “stack” the courts before he takes office.
“No more Judges confirmed before Inauguration Day,” he said.
The White House on Tuesday slammed calls to hold up its remaining judicial picks, taking particular aim at South Dakota Senator John Thune, who is slated to become Senate majority leader in January.
“Delaying the confirmation of highly qualified, experienced judges takes a real-life toll on constituents and leads to backlogs of criminal cases — meaning Senator Thune was correct in 2020 when he said senators have every urgent reason to continue working together in good faith to staff the federal bench,” a White House spokesperson said. “There is no excuse for choosing partisanship over enforcing the rule of law.”
Even though there is little Republicans can do to keep Democrats from confirming their remaining judges, there are a few nominees who have a steeper path to the federal bench thanks to intra-party friction.
The Senate has for months sat on Third Circuit nominee Adeel Mangi, after both Nevada Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen pulled their support as Republicans tied him to a controversial research program and a prison reform group.
Democrats and legal experts have widely panned those attacks as Islamophobic, but its unclear whether Cortez Masto or Rosen — who won reelection earlier this month — have changed their minds about supporting Mangi’s nomination.
Another Biden court pick, Southern District of New York nominee Sarah Netburn, was the subject of a rare Democratic defection on the Senate Judiciary Committee over the summer. After Republicans took issue with the nominee’s decision record as a magistrate judge, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff cast the deciding vote against favorably reporting her appointment to the full Senate.
Ossoff told Courthouse News last week that he had “no updates” on whether he might support Netburn the second time around.
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