“We have to call out everything”: One year into Trump 2.0, fair courts advocates chart the path forward

Trump is still appointing judges — and advocacy organizations are still fighting back.

One year into Trump’s second term, the Senate has confirmed 27 judges to lifetime positions on the federal bench. Six more remain pending on the Senate floor. Four others await a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And at any moment, the president could take a break from his lies to announce a disturbing truth: that he is nominating more individuals to the judiciary.

Trump’s appointment of lifetime federal judges continues to be alarming.

“In a healthy democracy, a president who has called for executing members of Congress would never be allowed to pick the people who will determine the legality of his actions,” said Paul Gordon, senior legislative counsel at People For the American Way. “Instead, that president would have already been impeached and removed from office.”

To the peril of our democracy, Trump is still the president — continuing to name, as presidents do, federal judicial nominees. But these nominees are not normal.

“By stacking the courts with ideological allies, Trump has turned the judiciary into a central tool for entrenching his extremist agenda and insulating it from public accountability,” states a memo released today by Reproductive Freedom for All. “Trump has nominated and secured the confirmation of 13 anti-reproductive freedom judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench in 2025, selected for their loyalty to him.”

Loyalty — and extremism — above all else

Advocates continue to call out Trump’s expectation of loyalty from those he appoints to the federal judiciary, in addition to the extreme records of his judicial picks.

“Trump’s latest nominees have egregious records filled with attacks on democracy and civil rights, but it’s also clear they’re expected to pass a loyalty test,” said Christine Chen Zinner, federal research and advocacy director at Alliance for Justice. “When every single nominee has the same scripted answer refusing to confirm that President Biden won the 2020 election, it raises huge alarms.”

These attacks on democracy and civil rights, as Chen Zinner described them, include significant work to undermine reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ equality. And they’re coming from all directions.

“Trump isn’t working alone. Congress and courts have the authority — and responsibility — to push back against his unlawful actions,” states the Reproductive Freedom for All memo. “Instead, too many lawmakers and judges are enabling his attempts to completely overhaul the federal government — installing anti-abortion, anti-freedom loyalists at every level, in every branch, to create a system where executive power reigns above all.”

Alison Gill, director of nominations & democracy at the National Women’s Law Center, noted that “several nominees worked in activist state legal departments that were created to litigate hot button culture war issues, such as undermining abortion rights and targeting trans young people.”

Indeed, at a moment when the U.S. Supreme Court just heard oral argument in two cases about the freedom of transgender youth to participate in school sports, Trump is selecting judicial nominees who have horrific anti-trans records.

“From the first nominees, now confirmed, to current nominees, there has been a focus on nominating anti-LGBTQ+ attorneys to the bench,” said Ethan Rice, senior attorney with the Fair Courts Project at Lambda Legal. “At the same time, the Trump administration has made it more difficult to follow the nominations process by avoiding issuing press releases on judicial nominees and cutting the American Bar Association out of its role in evaluating and rating nominees.”

Trump’s new way of announcing his judicial selections — via posts on Truth Social instead of through official White House channels — underscores that these are his nominees, and he is very much aware of who they are and what they will bring to the bench.

“Trump I nominees were picked for fealty to the dangerous policy objectives of Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. Trump II nominees are being picked for something even more dangerous: fealty to ‘King Donald Trump,’” said Gordon of People For the American Way. “Trump II nominees refuse to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election, and that the events of Jan. 6 were an attack on the Capitol. That disqualifies them from the bench. We have eyes. We know what we saw.”

Josh Orton, president of Demand Justice, agreed that this is disqualifying. “There’s two bad scenarios: Either they believe those things, as Trump believes those things, in which case I don’t think they have any business on the federal bench. Or they’re willing to sacrifice the truth and their own ethics to swear political allegiance to a president over the Constitution, which also disqualifies them from the federal bench,” he said.

“Think about whether in the future, if there are election interference cases, if there are cases about something that is personal to Trump,” Orton stated. “If you’re willing to sell yourself to Trump on the overthrow of a government, where would you draw the line?”

Charting the path forward

With Republicans still in control of the Senate with a 53-47 majority, defeating any of Trump’s judicial nominees — especially after Senate Republicans confirmed a nominee like Emil Bove — will be difficult. Still, fair courts advocates expressed a fierce determination to fight on.

“We need to raise the heat even more in 2026. We simply cannot be handing lifetime appointments to individuals whose loyalty is to an authoritarian rather than to the Constitution and the rule of law,” said Chen Zinner of Alliance for Justice. “We need to ask tough questions, and we need to raise a public outcry over how disturbing their records are. Otherwise, we’ll be handing our democracy over to judges who are openly unwilling to uphold it.”

Rice of Lambda Legal also emphasized the need for deeper questioning of judicial nominees to expose their extremism. “We need to see senators pushing back harder on these extreme nominees. More questioning about their backgrounds and the beliefs they will bring to the bench is necessary,” he said.

This more thorough questioning must happen both during confirmation hearings — where more senators need to actually show up to ask questions — and in written follow-up questions for the record, when Judiciary Committee members have the opportunity to ask nominees additional questions in writing. For the last three judicial nominees who had a hearing in December, only five of the 10 Democratic committee members submitted any questions for the nominees to answer. There is certainly room for improvement.

Members of the committee — and all senators — need to take their jobs seriously when it comes to this president’s judicial nominees.

“With Donald Trump seeking to put loyalists on the bench as he threatens our system of checks and balances, the Senate’s constitutional role in the judicial confirmation process has never been more important,” said Gordon of People For the American Way. “This should be on the top of every voter’s mind this November.”

That’s because every senator votes on every judicial nominee — and a third of the U.S. Senate is on the ballot in November. “Everyone has the opportunity to influence judicial nominations by voting in elections for senators who care about a fair, impartial, and diverse judiciary,” Rice noted.

“Especially as we head into the mid-term elections, and as Trump’s attacks on our democracy increase, Democrats’ votes on judges should align with their stance on Trump’s actions. Voters will notice the inconsistency of condemning Trump’s unlawful actions and then confirming his loyalists to lifetime seats on the courts,” added Gill of the National Women’s Law Center.

For voters to notice — and for senators to do the right thing — advocacy organizations, journalists, and others in a position to do so must bring more visibility to what’s happening. “We have to call out everything,” said Orton of Demand Justice. “Our challenge is to make sure that no one forgets that we are not living in normal times.”

We are indeed not living in normal times. Still, 18 Senate Democrats have voted for at least one of Trump’s judicial nominees during his second term. And according to Orton, when people — on Demand Justice’s social media channels and elsewhere — learn about this and the way that nominees are refusing to answer questions, they are furious.

“What is unsurprising and is going to reveal itself more in this new year, is that the more we tell people about what’s going on in the Senate Judiciary Committee, that there are Democrats who are voting for nominees who are absolutely, almost surgically unwilling to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election — when people find out about this, they are outraged. And they almost can’t believe it,” Orton said.

“Any Democratic member of the caucus who believes that they will either be politically rewarded for voting to confirm a Trump judicial nominee, or could face political consequences by voting against all of them, is just not living in modern times,” Orton stated. “There is no moral, ethical, historical, and I would argue political reason to vote for any of these nominees.”

While the Senate is out this week, senators will return to Washington next Monday and could still see votes on judicial nominees this month if Senate Majority Leader John Thune files cloture on any nominations next Monday or Tuesday. Otherwise, the six lifetime judicial nominees who are pending on the floor will see full Senate consideration in February.