Good news: Trump will appoint twice as many judges as Obama

The Obama era of leftist courts is ending before our eyes. President Trump will be appointing twice as many judges as Obama. He may have the opportunity to appoint half of the federal judiciary. This is huge. Only one circuit court had a majority of Democrat judges when Obama was elected. By the time he left, he had packed nine of the thirteen circuit courts with his leftist activists. Obama inherited 54 openings for these appointments. Harry Reid "went nuclear' and cut Republican senators out of the approval process.

Trump is now the beneficiary. He has compiled a magnificent list of conservative nominees. And he has 121 vacancies to fill. Not only that, but 219 more federal judges will be eligible to retire by the end of 2017. It could be even more revolutionary, although the GOP Senate leadership plans to sabotage Trump. ... 438 judges currently serving … will be eligible to take senior status, thereby creating a judicial vacancy, by the end of 2020. This means there is a possibility that 50.3 percent of life-term appointments could be vacant by the end of Trump's first term. The circuit courts are the appeals courts that rule on most federal law. They are in the aggregate more consequential than the Supreme Court, which reviews only 1% of cases submitted to it. Monday, President Trump announced plans to name ten federal judges en masse, excellent conservatives all. There is a fly in the ointment. See Ed Straker here at AT, "GOP Giving Individual Democrats Veto Power Over Judges." While it is true that Trump does not need a single Democrat vote to approve his appointments, the good old GOP elite plans to give the Democrats a veto anyway. Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley plans to honor Senate tradition, although trashed by Reid when he had power, and allow Democrat senators to veto appointments in their 19 states. It is this tradition that explains why Bush appointees to the Ninth Circuit Court – the one that shot down Trump's temporary travel ban – were almost as leftist as Democrat appointees. Bush deferred to the Democrat senators to choose the federal judges from their states. This is not what the Constitution says. Iowans need to let Grassley know they did not send him to Washington to empower Democrat vetoes over our courts. Despite GOP sabotage, President Trump will be able to have an enormous impact. His excellent judges will pull our court system back to their job, not imposing their personal politics, but enforcing respect for constitutional limits on government. Hat tip: Daily Signal, Legal Insurrection