Trump Could Appoint More White Men to the Federal Bench Than Women of Color Who’ve Ever Served
He is on pace to do so — and it should alarm everyone.
When the Senate adjourned on December 18, no woman of color had been confirmed all year to serve as a lifetime federal judge. And that’s because Trump didn’t nominate any.
This president’s commitment to appointing white judges remained steadfast last year. Sixteen more white men are now serving as lifetime judges — accounting for more than 60 percent of all judges confirmed in 2025. Seven white women were confirmed as well. Nearly 90 percent of Trump’s pending judicial nominees are also white.
During his five years in office so far, Trump has appointed 164 white men to the federal bench (yes, I’m including Josh Divine). There were four white men — Judges Andrew Brasher, Peter Phipps, Marvin Quattlebaum, and Justin Walker — who were confirmed twice during Trump’s first term, but this tally only counts them once. In American history (again, only counting each judge once), only 193 women of color have been confirmed to a lifetime judgeship — just 29 more than the white men appointed by Trump so far.
This president, as long as he’s alive, will certainly name enough judicial nominees to close this gap — and then some. Six more white men have already been nominated. And there are, at the moment, 41 current and future judicial vacancies without a nominee. Though Trump may be unable to fill all of those vacancies as long as blue slips are honored for district court nominees, more seats will open up.
It should alarm everyone that Trump is on pace to appoint more white men to the federal bench than women of color who have ever served as lifetime federal judges in the nation’s history.
Astonishingly, of the 260 lifetime judges appointed by Trump since 2017, only 11 — or about 4 percent — are women of color. Just 15 percent of his appointees are people of color, while 65 percent are white men.
This is appalling, and it’s made worse by the fact that Trump’s judicial nominees also lack professional diversity. To the extent they have civil rights experience, it is experience working against civil rights, including reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights, and more. And once confirmed, they are undermining civil and human rights from the bench.
This matters because judicial diversity — both demographic and professional — strengthens our democracy and has been shown to increase public trust in the courts, improve judicial decision-making, and provide for the opportunity for role models. It is critically important to have judges who respect and understand how the law impacts people’s lives and who can comprehend the broader consequences of their decisions. This has obviously not been a hallmark of Trump’s judicial selections — and there is no reason to think that this will change.
I’ll continue to track and report on these issues — because documenting them and calling them out matters. And I’m dedicated to doing it for as long as I can.
This rightly underscores a troubling pattern in judicial nominations and the very real risk of further entrenching a federal bench that does not reflect the diversity of the nation it serves. Judicial legitimacy depends not only on legal acumen, but on public confidence—something that is undermined when appointments overwhelmingly favor one demographic. You make a persuasive case for why representation in the judiciary is not a superficial concern, but a foundational one.
Ughhh. And today he just announced John Thomas Shepherd as a nominee to be Judge on the Western District of Arkansas. He is the son of 8th Circuit Judge Bobby Shepherd so it likely means he's going senior soon. Ughhh.