Having been dealt a number of legal defeats at the hands of Obama-appointed judges in the early days of his administration, Trump is preparing to fill roughly 120 vacancies on lower federal courts around the country. The first of those new appointments will come later today in the first slate of 10 nominees, which will be followed by "monthly waves of nominations" according to a White House official quoted by the New York Times.
One is Justice Joan L. Larsen, a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and law professor at the University of Michigan, who now serves on the Michigan Supreme Court. She will be nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati.
The other is Justice David R. Stras, a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and law professor at the University of Minnesota, who now serves on the Minnesota Supreme Court. He will be nominated to the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis.
The announcement on Monday will include three other nominees for federal appeals courts: Amy Coney Barrett, a law professor at Notre Dame and former law clerk to Justice Scalia, to the Seventh Circuit in Chicago; John K. Bush, a lawyer in Louisville, Ky., to the Sixth Circuit; and Kevin C. Newsom, a lawyer in Birmingham, Ala., who served as the state’s solicitor general and as a law clerk to Justice David H. Souter, to the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.
Many of the new appointments are expected to be pulled from the list of 21 "potential Supreme Court Justice picks" that Trump released back in September....so far, 3 of the 21 picks have been nominated for new positions.
1. Keith Blackwell
2. Charles Canady
3. Steven Colloton
4. Allison Eid
5. Neil Gorsuch
6. Raymond Gruender
7. Thomas Hardiman
8. Raymond Kethledge
9. Joan Larsen
10. Mike Lee
11. Thomas Lee
12. Edward Mansfield
13. Federico Moreno
14. William Pryor
15. Margaret A. Ryan
16. Amul Thapar
17. Timothy Tymkovich
18. David Stras
19. Diane Sykes
20. Don Willett
21. Robert Young
Of course, Democrats have called on the Senate to obstruct all new appointments from the Trump administration to the greatest extent possible.
But liberal groups expressed alarm at the prospect of a federal bench filled with Mr. Trump’s appointees. “The Trump administration has made clear its intention to benefit from Republican obstructionism and to pack the federal courts with ultraconservatives given a stamp of approval by the Federalist Society,” said Nan Aron, the president of the Alliance for Justice, referring to the conservative legal group. “We’ll be scrutinizing the records of these nominees very carefully.”
Ms. Aron said Democrats should be wary of Mr. Trump’s nominees. “Given the critical importance of the circuit courts,” she said, “it is incumbent upon the Senate to treat its duty to provide advice and consent very seriously.”
That said, with Republicans controlling a majority in the Senate and the "nuclear option" barrier already breached, we suspect there is very little they can do other than appear on CNN every 15 minutes to complain about Republicans doing all the same things that Obama did for 8 years.