Trump Begins Rightward Shift of Courts

This effort contributed to the relatively large backlog of 107 vacancies on trial and intermediate-appellate courts that Trump inherited. That’s more than what awaited four of Trump’s five immediate predecessors, according to the public-affairs website Ballotpedia. Only President Bill Clinton had more initial vacancies, with 111. By contrast, Obama found only 54 lower-court vacancies when he took office, while President George W. Bush had 84. Trump’s starting batch of 107 represents 12 percent of all 890 federal judicial positions.

Those vacancies, and the ones to come as more judges retire (the number has already jumped to 136 in the six months since inauguration) offer Trump the chance to sculpt the courts to his liking. During the campaign, he said he would “appoint judges very much in the mold of Justice Scalia,” a forceful conservative who unexpectedly died in February 2016. Perhaps more than some of his liberal detractors gave him credit for, Trump, 71, understood the importance of the judiciary to Republicans who were reluctant to support him. “If you really like Donald Trump, that’s great, but if you don’t, you have to vote for me anyway,” he said at a rally in Iowa last July. “You know why? Supreme Court judges, Supreme Court judges.”

As a candidate, Trump relied on suggestions from two establishment conservative groups, the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, to assemble a list of 21 potential high court picks. Gorsuch was on their list. Now Trump is pulling from the same compilation for his lower-court choices. One example is Allison Eid, whom Trump has nominated for the vacancy created by Gorsuch’s departure from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver. A member of the Colorado Supreme Court, Eid previously served as the state’s solicitor general and as a law clerk to the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing elder, Justice Clarence Thomas.

Conservatives applauded Eid’s selection in June, as well as those of 10 other lawyers, judges and scholars. “It’s a fantastic list,” Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the right-leaning Judicial Crisis Network, said in a post on the National Review’s Bench Memos blog. “Many of the nominees are well known in the conservative legal movement.” Trump so far has nominated 15 people to the lower courts, including Stephanos Bibas, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who clerked for the Supreme Court’s swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, and has argued several cases before the justices. Bibas is up for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. Professor Amy Coney Barrett of the University of Notre Dame, who previously clerked for Scalia, was nominated for a seat on the the Seventh Circuit in Chicago.

Administration officials “know what they are looking for,” said Jonathan Adler, a conservative constitutional law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “Most of the appellate court nominees are current or former academics. That shows a desire for judges who will have an intellectual influence on the courts they’re placed on.” Noah Feldman, a liberal professor at Harvard Law School and Bloomberg View columnist, volunteered that “these are better picks than one might have expected—maybe better than one could have hoped.” Feldman attributed the quality of these early nominees to the administration’s having “outsourced judicial selection” to “elite conservative lawyers.”

Under Senate rules, confirming judicial nominations requires only a simple majority. That means Republicans need sway all but one of their 52-member caucus to push through a nominee, and even with just 50, they can count on Vice President Mike Pence as a tie-breaker.

It used to be that a Supreme Court nominee required 60 votes, but to guarantee Gorsuch’s ascension to what many Democrats bitterly considered Garland’s seat, McConnell exercised the so-called nuclear option, and changed the rule.

In the end, Gorsuch received three Democratic votes and was confirmed 54-45. The only other Trump nominee the Senate has voted on so far, Amul Thapar, a former federal trial judge, took a seat on the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati after being confirmed 52-44.

Despite Feldman’s muted assessment of Trump’s initial nominees, liberal activists sound glum. “The whole situation is worrisome,” said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice in Washington. “We’re seeing nominees, including Gorsuch, who are going to turn back the clock on hard-fought rights and liberties.” The prospect of a Trump-shaped federal judiciary “is all the more critical now,” Aron added, “because the courts are the only institution that are providing a check against the administration’s more extreme policies.” As an example, she pointed to the ban on travel from six majority-Muslim countries, which several lower courts blocked before the Supreme Court last month largely reinstated it and agreed to hear arguments on its lawfulness come fall.

The narrow Senate majority currently held by Republicans doesn’t ensure confirmation of every Trump nominee, however. Two White House choices that have infuriated Democrats and could make moderate Republicans queasy are John Bush and Damien Schiff. Both men, who are scheduled for a vote before the Senate Judiciary Committee as soon as next week, have come under fire for hard-right views they’ve expressed as prolific bloggers.

Bush, 52, a Kentucky lawyer nominated to an appellate judgeship on the Sixth Circuit, posted (PDF) pseudonymously in 2008 that slavery and abortion have been “the two greatest tragedies in our country”

>>155844
>Some good news to brighten up your day!
Good.
The sooner the cancerous USA tears itself apart the better.

and added that they stemmed from “similar reasoning and activist justices at the Supreme Court, first in the Dred Scott decision [of 1857], and later in Roe.” By that reasoning, justices such as Anthony Kennedy who have voted to uphold Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion-rights landmark, ought to be condemned along with 19th century proponents of slavery. Questioned during a June 14 Judiciary Committee hearing, Bush said that in retrospect he regrets the post equating abortion and slavery and wouldn’t allow his personal views to color his work as a judge.

Schiff, an attorney with the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, is a nominee for a spot on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, a specialized body that hears certain lawsuits against the government. In one 2007 post, Schiff assailed Justice Kennedy, a conservative who sometimes sides with the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc. He called the 80-year-old justice a “judicial prostitute” prone to “‘selling’ his vote, as it were, to four other justices in exchange for the high that comes from aggrandizement of power and influence, and the blandishments of the fawning media and legal academy.” At the June 14 hearing, Schiff, 37, apologized for his harsh language and said his point wasn’t “to impugn or malign any person” but to “attack a certain style of judging that is frequently applauded in the media.”

As it happens, rumors have swirled lately in Washington that Kennedy, soon to turn 81, is considering retirement. His potential departure would give Trump another important vacancy to fill. Given Kennedy’s critical role in several 5-4 victories for the liberal wing, it may be the most important of all.

>>155848
The only tearing will be of liberals assholes.

if trump nominates them and the GOP in congress + some dems approve them, they'll be corporatist to the bone, that's all we know for certain.

>>155851
Good good.
One step at a time.

>>155860
They'll probably throw a bone to the christian right to keep folks guessing at least.

>>155844
Who's the old one appointed by Lyndon B Johnson?

>>155848
>USA
>Cancerous

Being this salty over USAs strength and dominance is good

>>155885
Everyone outside of the US and its allies are pleased with the momentum of our level of global dominance.

The Republicans want us to be like a third world country. Well-connected elite class living in gated communities and poor underclass living in the slums around them. They admire the model of the developing country. They've said it themselves; income inequality, no matter how disproportionate to the differential in what is invested, is something that is acceptable. Money is a form of speech when spent by corporations on candidates. To many conservatives, the poor living by the good graces of the wealthy is the sign of a healthy society. It was also a sign of the middle ages (don't get any romantic ideas about that).

When the middle class is a thing of the past, the trade deficit will assuredly be quite low. We'll be an export-oriented economy like China, not a consumption based one. The working class manufacturing goods that they mostly can't afford themselves (let alone affording imports), but will be exported or sold to the minority upper class, further concentrating their wealth. Like you have in China, India, Russia.

Becoming like a 3rd world will harm liberals as much and in the same way as conservatives in fact. Probably even worse for middle America given their lower median income than the more liberal coastal states.

>>155894
>The Republicans want us to be like a third world country.
Source

>>155894
Yes if you vote republican and you aren't a billionaire funding the republican party you are 100 percent fucking yourself over more than liberals who tend to at least be better educated. I would argue that even the ultraweatlthy are fucking themselves over by trying to fuck america over and that everyone tends to be happier in countries with high levels of income equality but that involves research by social scientists who are basically the devil according to the right.

>>155885
>strength and dominance
starting wars
running away
big strong usa

oh good, now we can swing the pendulum of power imbalance the other way. maybe one day it will swing back so we can get excited again

>>155908
>Clinton supported by Hollywood, Citibank, all MSM outlets minus Fox, Warren Buffet, all major Telecom companies, all major banks

You're the fool they love

>>155927
Clinton was only 50 percent funded by superpacs, which is total shit but not nearly as bad as the 95 plus percent of every candidate besides trump. Trump had enough to invest in himself and he fully intends to recoup his investment by refusing to divest of his interests and milking whatever personal gain he can from his presidency. Also almost everyone he appointed is billionaire with special interests, so with trump the corrupt special interests just literally are the government. If you think any of this is acceptable you are definitely dumber than anyone who thought that voting for Hillary in the primaries was OK.

>>155944
*95 plus percent of every candidate in the gop

>>155944
If you're going to hate him either way, better to hate him for using his own money I guess

>>155998
Not really most high level politicians at least have to learn a little bit about political issues or at the very least the political process within the United States. Trump didnt bother to do any of that, and in fact has never even bothered to read a fucking book in his entire life. He literally just decided to buy his way into the presidency because he was born with enough money to do it. The reason why Russia supported his election efforts was to be able to show Russians that American democracy is dead. "Look guys if you think its corrupt here you should know that its the same shit everywhere look at America where they elected a fucking man baby with a bank account."

This current presidency will either wake up people to affect campaign finance reform in an effort to turn this country around, or it will be the moment historians point to as the definitive moment that america died.

>>156006
>This current presidency will either wake up people to affect campaign finance reform in an effort to turn this country around, or it will be the moment historians point to as the definitive moment that america died
>campaign finance reform
>with an impotent congress and exceedingly corrupt judiciary
not a chance for at least a decade if not longer. and America won't die. we're gonna fuck our domestic economy, but it's the 21st century. The entire world is knitted together, and America can't die. we'll probably experience another recession and maybe civil unrest will spill over into something bigger (doubtful with how fucking lazy and stupid too many of us are) but we'll survive. the US has survived considerably worse.

>>156006
I still don't think there's been any verified proof of Russia supporting his election besides.

>>156015
>the entire world is knitted together

Not according to alt-righters or Trump conservatives. That's why they're so dangerous; they won't just kneecap domestic policy, they'll wreck foreign policy too by alienating old allies and getting in bed with Russia, which has never been a good friend of the West even at the best of times.

And yes, the US will most likely survive a Trump presidency, though its dignity may not. But whether it will still be the supreme world power after these decades will be in question.

>>155908
ph you're still butthurt
it's so cute

>>156042
They need us more than we need them, and the US has been the babysitter of the west for too long. Time for the rest of the world to deal with their own issues.