When Mitch McConnell announced the great Merrick Garland Gamble of 2016, declaring that Senate Republicans would block President Obama from fulfilling his constitutionally-delegated duty to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court, even he could not have imagined it would pay off this handsomely.

In two years, the majority leader facilitated not only a trillion-dollar tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, but also the confirmation of a pair of Supreme Court justices and nearly three dozen appeals court nominees—many of whom took positions McConnell had held open during the Obama administration. These judges preside over tens of thousands of cases every year, and under McConnell's watchful eye, Trump has pushed their courts slowly and inexorably to the right.

In 2019, McConnell faces a different set of circumstances. A new Democratic-controlled House stands in the way of enacting a sweeping legislative agenda, as does a scandal-ridden president whose obsession with building a border wall puts him increasingly at odds with members of his own party. Thus, McConnell is embracing a new method for cementing his legacy, and one which he can implement on a near-unilateral basis: shepherding as many federal district court nominees as possible through the confirmation process before his party loses the White House, the Senate, or both.

According to Politico, McConnell is preparing to invoke a "new nuclear option" by reducing the amount of time for debate over district-level judicial nominees from 30 hours to two. The phrase refers to a procedure by which senators, with a simple majority vote, can change the rules governing how they conduct business. The nuclear option's most famous invocation came in 2017, when McConnell and company, lacking the 60 votes necessary to install Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat stolen from Garland, simply did away with the requirement altogether. This proved to be a wise choice a year later, as the nomination of Republican justice Brett Kavanaugh would almost certainly have failed if McConnell had had to marshal meaningful bipartisan support.

As Politico notes, if it is successful, this change would have a dramatic effect on Trump's ability to address current district court vacancies. In addition to axing that 60-vote threshold, McConnell has also dispensed with "blue-slipping," a longstanding Senate tradition that allowed senators to nix the nominations of objectionable nominees from their home states. By eliminating yet another method by which Democrats can voice their opposition, Republicans further insure themselves against the distinct possibility that 2020 does not go as well as 2016. South Dakota senator John Thune gives the game away when discussing why confirming these lower-court judges is suddenly such a "high priority" for the caucus: "I mean, it’s one of the things we can do that we don’t need the House’s help with."

There are a number of reasons why Republicans are so good at stocking the federal bench: the emphasis their candidates place on the subject in elections; the existence of the Senate, an undemocratic anachronism that should be abolished; and a willingness to ignore precedent when their preferred outcomes appear in doubt. Well-heeled donors—Kochs and Mercers among them—have spent decades investing in outfits like the Federalist Society, which maintains a robust pipeline of conservative lawyers that it grooms for judicial service. During the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the White House relied heavily on the organization's president, Leonard Leo, for guidance. Sure enough, Leo makes a triumphant cameo in this Politico report: "What you could witness under Senator McConnell's leadership," he says, "is a situation where an incoming president has very, very few open seats to fill."