The Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee has curtailed one of the last legislative limits on a president’s power to shape the federal courts, giving Donald Trump more freedom than any U.S. president in modern times to install his judges of choice, legal experts said.
Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R. Iowa) reined in a tradition that empowered senators to block federal appeals-court nominees from their home state. His decision came about four years after Democrats, citing Republican filibusters of President Barack Obama’s circuit-court nominees, eliminated a Senate rule that required the majority party to mount 60 votes to advance a nominee to a confirmation vote. Now only 51 percent is required, essentially eliminating the possibility of a filibuster on court nominees.
Removing the threat of a filibuster and the delay tactic of home state senators, which guarded against ideologically-driven lifetime appointments of nominees that are perceived to be far outside the mainstream will give Mr. Trump and future presidents far more power in getting nominations approved for the federal bench. The previous practices gave the minority party the ability to stall nominations for partisan reasons.
So far, the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee has approved two nominees pronounced unfit to serve by the American Bar Association [ABA], including a Justice Department lawyer who has never argued a motion in federal court and whose wife is the chief of staff for the top White House lawyer. “If Senate Republicans will confirm him, then there is no realistic sense of checks and balances,” said Christopher Kang, who worked on judicial nominations in the Obama White House.
In other words, Senator Grassley has given Mr. Trump enormous power over the election of federal judges. If these are nominated based on recommendations from his strong evangelical advisors, the courts could easily become so rightward that they would undermine religious protections of minority religions, including Sabbath keepers.
Mr. Grassley said that after his recent move, a negative response from a home-state senator would be a “significant factor” for the committee to consider but wouldn’t prevent a hearing, a break with the practice of Senate Judiciary Committee chairmen since at least 2005. He blamed the Democrats for abusing the Senate Rule after they removed the filibuster. “The Democrats seriously regret that they abolished the filibuster, as I warned them they would. But they can’t expect to use the [blocking practice] in its place,” he said on the Senate floor last week.
Mr. Grassley also has parted with common practice by stacking two circuit court nominees in a single confirmation hearing, reducing time for preparation and questions, and holding hearings before the ABA finished its judicial evaluations.
“Taken together, it’s clear that Republicans want to remake our courts by jamming through President Trump’s nominees as quickly as possible,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D. Calif.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in an emailed statement.
The median time from nomination to Senate confirmation for circuit-court nominees was less than a month in the administrations of presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, said Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies federal courts. That number rose through the 1980s and 1990s and ballooned to 229 days during President Barack Obama’s two terms, he said.
“It is no time now to allow our minds to be engrossed with things of minor importance. While men are sleeping, Satan is actively arranging matters so that the Lord’s people may not have mercy or justice. The Sunday movement is now making its way in darkness. The leaders are concealing the true issue, and many who unite in the movement do not themselves see whither the undercurrent is tending. Its professions are mild and apparently Christian, but when it shall speak it will reveal the spirit of the dragon.” Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, page 452.