Biden judicial confirmations continue — as Trump's questionable nominees continue
Judicial confirmations appear to be nearing their end, with few votes likely remaining. Also: Trump's nominee to lead DOJ's Civil Rights Division needs scrutiny.
With Cynthia Dixon’s confirmation on Tuesday afternoon to be a district court judge for the Central District of California, the Senate has confirmed 11 judicial nominees since returning from Thanksgiving.
The other 10 are: Anthony Brindisi (N.D. N.Y.), Elizabeth Coombe (N.D. N.Y.), Sarah Morgan Davenport (D. N.M.), Catherine Henry (E.D. Penn.), Anne Hwang (C.D. Calif.), Tiffany Rene Johnson (N.D. Ga.), Brian Murphy (D. Mass.), Keli Marie Neary (M.D. Penn.), Sparkle Sooknanan (D. D.C.), and Gail Weilheimer (E.D. Penn.).
The numbers bring President Joe Biden’s total confirmed lifetime-tenure federal judges to 232 — two fewer than Donald Trump confirmed in his term.
At this point, only one district court nomination — Noël Wise (N.D. Calif.) — remains pending on the floor. Cloture was invoked on his nomination on a 50-49 vote on Nov. 21. It was a party-line vote, with Sen. Joe Manchin not voting.
The final two nominees that appear to be moving forward are still in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Benjamin Cheeks (S.D. Calif.) and Serena Raquel Murillo (C.D. Calif.) had their confirmation hearings on Nov. 20.
There remain four appeals court nominees pending on the floor who — per Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s earlier statement — did not have the votes to be confirmed. Two had been nominated for seats that are now vacant. They are Julia Lipez for the First Circuit and Adeel Mangi for the Third Circuit. The other two would replace sitting judges who announced that they would take senior status upon the confirmation of their successor. They are Karla Campbell, nominated for the Sixth Circuit seat currently held by Judge Jane Stranch, and Ryan Young Park, nominated for the Fourth Circuit seat currently held by Judge James Wynn Jr.
The real question — assuming Campbell and Park don’t get confirmed — is whether Stranch and Wynn, respectively, will rescind their senior status plans.
Although Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, complained about two district court judges who rescinded their announced retirements and essentially threatened Stranch and Wynn, he has no room to even comment on judicial nomination politicization beyond acknowledging his key role in the politicization — let alone criticize anyone else involved in the process. He went so far, as Bloomberg reported, as to suggest “they’d face ‘significant ethics complaints’ followed by ‘serial recusal demands’ from the Justice Department if they stayed on.”
If anything, it is McConnell whose actions are the troubling ones.
It’s hard to imagine Stranch and Wynn allowing Trump to nominate their successor, and, given that their decision to take senior status was contingent on the confirmation of their successor, they can and should rescind their plans once the Senate completes its work for the year if their successors are not confirmed.
Finally, there are four other district court nominations at issue. There were three nominees whose nominations did not get confirmation hearings. They are Rebecca Kanter (S.D. Calif.), Detra Shaw-Wilder (S.D. Fla.), and Danna Rae Jackson (D. Mont.). Lastly, in response to a failed nomination for a seat on the Southern District of New York, Biden announced his intention to nominate Tali Farhadian Weinstein for the seat. That nomination has still not even been formally submitted to the Senate, though, so I don’t imagine it will be or, if it is, won’t be able to lead to a confirmation.
For more on judicial nominations, read Law Dork’s coverage here.
Trump’s latest MAGA-world nominee
On Monday evening, Donald Trump announced his intended nominee to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Harmeet Dhillon, who lost her effort to oust Ronna McDaniel as the head of the Republican National Committee in 2023, has long been a strong Trump booster. More recently, though, Dhillon’s firm also took on Elon Musk’s X Corp. as a client in August in its antitrust lawsuit against advertisers.
With Trump and Musk in her camp, it’s not surprising to see her get a nomination from Trump.
That said, the nomination is an extremely alarming one. Dhillon would be replacing Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the current head of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. Clarke was the president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law before joining DOJ, had worked in the Civil Rights Division previously, and had a career in civil rights work.
Dhillon has backed many of Trump’s most extreme efforts. Although not one of his criminal defense lawyers or a former impeachment lawyer, like Trump’s other DOJ nominees, Dhillon has nonetheless been a lawyer representing Trump’s interests, serving as “the co-chairwoman in 2020 of a group, Lawyers for Trump, that challenged the results of that year’s presidential election.”
And, as Trump wrote on Monday, she has been “fighting to ensure that all, and ONLY, legal votes are counted” and fought “woke policies” in her private legal career — making her a good fit with at least some of the Project 2025 goals for the Justice Department.
Erin Reed detailed Dhillon’s work as the founder of the Center for American Liberty, including “targeting safe refuge states for trans people and suing hospitals,“ in her post on the nomination.
The Center for American Liberty is an organization whose explicit mission is “dedicated to defending the civil liberties of Americans left behind by civil rights legacy organizations“ and “leading the fight against” what the group refers to as “a coordinated assault on our civil liberties from corporations, politicians, socialist revolutionaries, and inept or biased government officials.“
Trump now intends to nominate Dhillon, the person behind that organization, to head the Civil Rights Division at DOJ.
Dhillon would need to go through a confirmation process before she could begin, though, and it is very important — especially in light of ongoing litigation — that senators make Dhillon answer questions about her views on transgender rights and the role of the Civil Rights Division in supporting and securing them.
Donald Trump takes office in 41 days.
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I guess no one follows the old adage, District judges for show, Circuit judges for dough.