Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has given every indication that his primary focus will be the ongoing reshaping of the courts. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo Congress McConnell's laser focus on transforming the judiciary Without a larger vision for 2019, Senate Republicans are touting successes on confirming judges.

A handful of Republican senators did something unusual on Wednesday: With the Senate not even in session, and no Democrats in sight, they convened the Judiciary Committee to advance a half-dozen of Donald Trump’s judicial nominees.

For Republicans, there’s nothing that matters more. They aren’t pitching a big visionary agenda to persuade voters to return them to power next year — there’s only passing mention in the midterms of repealing Obamacare, and little talk of making Trump’s border wall a reality. It’s all about the judiciary.


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has given every indication that his primary focus — through Election Day and, assuming Republicans still control the Senate, in the two years to follow, will be the ongoing reshaping of the courts.

“I love the tax bill and a lot of the other things we did. But I think lifetime appointments — not only to the Supreme Court but to the circuit courts — are the way you have the longest lasting impact on the country,” McConnell said in an interview this month. “The president and his team have sent up, in my view, excellent judges, and we’ve had the unity we’ve needed … to get them confirmed.”

That could mean a 2019 that looks a lot like the scene Wednesday: Reporters asking senators about unrelated issues outside the Senate Judiciary Committee, while inside the GOP continues barreling ahead with confirming a parade of younger conservative judges like 36-year-old Allison Rushing, who could serve on the Fourth Circuit for perhaps 40 or 50 years given her youth.

Sign up here for POLITICO Huddle A daily play-by-play of congressional news in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

McConnell’s pace of filling federal court seats has been eye-popping, especially on the powerful appellate circuits. Addressing the conservative Heritage Foundation on Tuesday night, McConnell touted 29 circuit court judges confirmed since Trump took office, which he described as a record pace “in any administration in history.” That’s 16 percent of the 179 appeals court seats.

Trump’s latest circuit nominee, Rushing, faced occasionally sharp questions from one of the four Republicans who attended on Wednesday. But the Democratic side of the aisle was empty less than a week after the minority agreed to confirm 15 Trump judges in exchange for an early recess, a boycott a Democratic aide said was intentional. While Brett Kavanaugh’s brutal confirmation fight left the new Supreme Court justice with dismal approval ratings, Republicans are betting that McConnell’s judicial hot streak will do more to energize their base in this year’s conservative battleground states than Democrats.

The Kentucky Republican pledged Tuesday night to continue two more years of work on his confirmation agenda if the GOP keeps the Senate. It’s a mission, set in motion by his 2016 decision to bottle up Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination, that is looking easy to carry out.

To transform the courts, Republicans need the presidency and 50 GOP votes in the Senate given the recent evisceration of the filibuster on nominees. With 51 seats and a generous Senate map laid out before them, there’s an easy roadmap for the GOP to continue clawing back the more than 300 lifetime confirmations that Democrats oversaw during Barack Obama’s presidency.

“A president is entitled to nominate people,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said on Wednesday, adding that he “would support legislation that says if the president, no matter who the president is, nominates somebody in the executive branch or judicial branch, the Senate’s got 90 days to vote yea or nay. That’s what we’re paid to do.”

Democrats believe the GOP’s bump on the judiciary from the Kavanaugh fight will recede over the next three weeks.

Courts are “obviously a very, very important issue,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman, in a recent interview. “But it’s also a fact that the issue that is at the top of most people’s mind around the country are things like: rising health care costs, the very real and warranted fear that people will undermine pre-existing conditions for health care.”

But GOP Senate candidates have leaned into the Kavanaugh fight: Josh Hawley in Missouri and Matt Rosendale in Montana have cut ads tied to Senate Democrats’ opposition to Kavanaugh. Individual candidates also mention working again at health care reform and repealing Obamacare, but McConnell will set the agenda if Republicans hold on.

And the GOP’s practical prospects for progress on changing health care are relatively weak compared to the judiciary’s energizing effect on conservatives. That’s in part because unity on judges is far easier to come by than on most other major policy issues. Kavanaugh sparked controversy for the sexual assault allegations against him, but the Senate spends much more of its time on lower court nominees whom Democrats can delay but not stop.

Lately they’ve struggled to even do that. Twice in the past two months, Democrats have consented to large confirmation packages of Trump judges to allow endangered senators to go home and campaign. And Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) scheduled two hearings during the pre-election recess to begin moving more nominees that can be confirmed in the lame duck session and clear the decks ahead of the new Congress next year.

The top Democrat on Judiciary, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, decried the hearing on Wednesday, which was run by Kennedy and lasted fewer than two hours. Although Republicans said that Feinstein had agreed to Wednesday’s judicial hearing as well as another one expected next week, Feinstein spokeswoman Ashley Schapitl said that she had given no such approval to move ahead on a “controversial” nomination hearing during a Senate recess.

Rushing, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, is not admitted to the bar in her home state of North Carolina and her nine years’ experience falls short of the 12 years typically sought by the American Bar Association before they can provide ratings of nominees. She was admitted to practice in the appeals court circuit where she’s now slated to become a judge one year ago, according to Democrats.

A Senate Democratic aide argued that by agreeing to recess the Senate before the election, the party at least limited McConnell’s ability to confirm Rushing immediately. But Democratic activists say they are tired of watching their party get steamrolled, likening McConnell to a schoolyard bully.

"If the Democrats were going to fast-track all those Trump judges to get out of town for the rest of October, the least they could have gotten for their trouble was a commitment from McConnell to not still hold hearings while the Senate was adjourned,” said Brian Fallon, who leads liberal judiciary group Demand Justice. “It wasn't enough for Democrats to let themselves get shoved into a locker, they also had to have their lunch money taken."

Republicans spent the second half of Obama’s presidency delaying many of the Democrats’ nominees when they were in the minority and then blocking dozens of them outright once they got the majority in 2015. Now that Trump is president, they have smashed down on the accelerator: The GOP has confirmed two Supreme Court justices and 29 Circuit Court nominees and 53 District Court nominees in fewer than two years. During Obama's first two years in office, Democrats — who held majorities in both houses — confirmed 62 federal judges.

And the ability to push those numbers even higher is clearly the biggest reward up for grabs on next month in the midterms. Democrats are defending a half-dozen vulnerable incumbents and must pick up at least two seats in mostly conservative territory to pick back up the majority, putting the odds firmly in the GOP’s favor.

“It’s always the main prize, because it’s a chance to get the best people we can on the bench,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a former Judiciary chairman. And Rushing, he added, “is the type of person you want to get for the federal bench.”