If confirmed, Neomi Rao, 44, would be able to serve a lifetime post on the D.C. court, largely considered the second highest court of the land and a training ground for future Supreme Court justices. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Legal Trump nominates deregulation ace to fill Kavanaugh's seat on D.C. court

President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the nomination of Neomi Rao, the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, to fill the vacancy left in the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by Justice Brett Kavanaugh's move to the Supreme Court.

The announcement came as a surprise to the attendees of a Diya lighting ceremony in the White House commemorating Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains around the world. Her position at the White House agency tasked with rule-making makes Rao a notable ally of Trump at the center of one of his core campaign promises: gutting excessive regulations from the federal government.


Trump appeared delighted to jump ahead of Wednesday's planned announcement to nominate Rao, saying it was potentially the "biggest story" of the day.

"We were going to announce that tomorrow," Trump told a crowd of South Asian members of his administration at the White House. "And I said, you know, 'Here we are, Neomi, we're never going to do better than this.'"

"She's going to be fantastic," Trump added. "Great person."

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics 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.

If confirmed by the Senate, Rao, who is 45, would be able to serve a lifetime post on the D.C. court, largely considered the second highest court of the land and a training ground for future Supreme Court justices. In addition to Kavanaugh, Chief Justice John Roberts and Judge Merrick Garland were both groomed in this court.

Rao was previously confirmed to head the regulation office in a 59-36 vote, with five senators not voting.

Shortly after taking office, Trump signed an executive order decreeing that two regulations be cut for every new one added, one of his signature goals during the campaign. At the end of his first year in office, Trump held a ceremony at the White House during which he announced his administration had nixed 67 regulations while adding three. The president, standing next to reams of paper, symbolically cut a line of red tape.

"It’s just the first year of the administration,” Rao told POLITICO at the time. “Unraveling the biggest rules from the past requires a careful process, all new cost-benefit analysis, all of the rulemaking that needs to take place to unravel a big rule. We will see more, deeper, substantive deregulation in the coming year."

Rao, who was a law professor at George Mason University before coming to the White House, is also a protégée of Justice Clarence Thomas. She has spoken at multiple events at the Federalist Society, the conservative legal scholarship group that has influenced Trump's judicial picks, including Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch.