Here’s Where Things Stand on Trump’s Judicial Nominees

New lifetime nominations, a hearing this week, and more.

Following its Veterans Day recess last week, the Senate is set to reconvene tomorrow afternoon (before recessing — again — next week for Thanksgiving). Here’s what’s happening with Trump’s nominees to serve in lifetime federal judgeships.

New nominees

Last week, in two waves of Truth Social posts on Wednesday and Friday, Trump announced six more district court nominees: Nick Ganjei for the Southern District of Texas, David “Clay” Fowlkes for the Western District of Arkansas, Aaron Peterson for the District of Alaska, Justin Olson for the Southern District of Indiana, Brian Lea for the Western District of Tennessee, and Megan Benton for the Western District of Missouri.

Some notes:

• Alliance for Justice has already announced their opposition to Nick Ganjei’s confirmation and has a fact sheet available here. It references his deep ties to right-wing activist organizations and his anti-civil rights, anti-immigration record. Ganjei previously worked as Senator Ted Cruz’s chief counsel, and Cruz serves on the Judiciary Committee — so go ahead and prepare yourself for the love fest that will occur during his confirmation hearing.

• Trump’s announcement of Justin Olson’s nomination, which occurred during Transgender Awareness Week, hyped up his anti-trans record — saying that Olson “has been fighting tirelessly to keep men out of women’s sports.” Reuters reported more on this here.

• Megan Benton is the daughter of Eighth Circuit Judge Duane Benton, who recently announced he would assume senior status and thus created a vacancy for Trump to fill on that court. Curiously, there is no publicly known current or future vacancy on the Western District of Missouri — a potential signal that Trump will soon seek to elevate one of that court’s judges to the Eighth Circuit.

In committee

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a nominations hearing this Wednesday, November 19, at 10 a.m. ET. It is anticipated that Ganjei, Fowlkes, and Peterson will appear before the committee that day — just one week after Trump publicly announced them. This is not normal.

The following day, the committee is scheduled to meet and vote on a number of nominees, including four for federal district courts. Two of those nominees — Robert Chamberlin and James Maxwell for the Northern District of Mississippi — were first listed on an agenda for consideration on September 18. New reporting indicates that Senator Thom Tillis, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, is preventing them from moving forward and that his block on the “nominees is due to negotiations with Wicker, Mississippi’s senior senator, over federal recognition of the Lumbee and other issues unrelated to the nominees themselves.”

Two other district court nominees — Alexander Van Hook for the Western District of Louisiana and William Crain for the Eastern District of Louisiana — could also advance to the Senate floor on Thursday. As I previously reported, Crain wrote in his responses to written questions for the record that he is “pro-civil rights” despite his long record to the contrary.

On the floor

There are currently four North Carolina district court nominees pending on the Senate floor, though cloture has not yet been filed on any of their nominations. If Senate Majority Leader John Thune files cloture when the Senate returns on Tuesday, one or more of them could be confirmed on Thursday (or Friday, if the Senate works past Thursday afternoon, which is rare).

As I wrote about here, one of those nominees — Susan Courtwright Rodriguez — will be the first woman to ever serve as a lifetime judge on the Western District of North Carolina. Her record, unfortunately, is not one of a balanced, fair-minded judge.

Overall

So far this year, the Senate has confirmed 19 lifetime judges — six to circuit courts and 13 to district courts. They are about 84 percent white and nearly 75 percent male (and nearly 60 percent are white men). Their lack of demographic diversity is matched only by their stunning lack of professional diversity and their hostility to civil and human rights.

At this point in the first year of his first term, based on confirmation date, Trump had appointed eight circuit court judges and only five district court judges. In total, 18 of his lifetime nominees were confirmed in 2017, so he is already ahead of that pace (though he has fewer total vacancies to fill this time).

Stay tuned for more — including coverage of Wednesday’s hearing.