Republicans are celebrating how they’ve packed the 12 regional federal appeals courts (excluding a specialized federal appellate court) with conservative judges. Earlier this month, President Trump hosted Senate Republicans at the White House to cheer their 45th confirmation. Stephen Bannon recently said, in praising Don McGahn, the former White House counsel who chose many of the new appointees, “Why the left is triggered by Trump is because they understand they’re in a Kafkaesque nightmare, that Donald Trump is going to be in their personal lives 10, 20 and 30 years from now.”

Yes, it should embarrass Senate Republicans that their signature achievement is confirming their own president’s nominees, something that used to be taken for granted. Yet there’s no denying that the slew of new appellate judges is genuine reason for progressive angst. In nearly 34 months, President Trump has filled over one-quarter of these benches. At a roughly comparable point in 2011, President Barack Obama had appointed only 19, and he named only 55 altogether. Three appellate courts have flipped from a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents to a majority appointed by Republicans.

Not surprisingly, most of the new appointees are young and seem to have been selected for their ideological bona fides. Many have held political jobs in the Trump administration or Republican state governments, clerked for one of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court or belong to the Federalist Society, or some combination of the above.

But if the courthouse cloud is dark for liberals, there are silver linings. Most of the new judges are replacing Republican-appointed predecessors, and the regional circuits are nearly even, seven Republican majority and five Democratic, with the three flipped Republican courts closely split. The overall number of Republican-appointed circuit judges has edged ahead of Democratic-appointed ones, but the difference isn’t vast. For the moment, the courts are more mixed, not irretrievably lost.