Elections have consequences. That famous quote from Barack Obama in 2009 has liberals, leftists, and Democrats across the country gnashing their teeth these days. Thanks to not just the presidential election in 2016, but the 2018 Midterms that saw Republicans take the majority in the Senate, all those open seats in the federal courts are systematically being filled with young, conservative judges.
Most Americans are familiar with the two who now sit on the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. It is expected that President Trump will get to fill at least two more seats with young conservatives before his time in the Oval Office is up.
As of this writing, eighty district court seats have been filled, and forty-one appeals court judges have been confirmed. That’s over one hundred and twenty judgeships the liberals wish they could have given that their favorite method of controlling the government is to go looking for a judge willing to rule their way when they sue. And their favorite venue to file such suits is the ninth circuit court which oversees more states than any other and has been appropriately nicknamed the 9th Circus.
President Trump is about to have the last laugh there, though. In the very court where some of his executive orders died, he is going to be the president with the privilege of flipping the ninth circus to the majority of judges being appointed by Republican presidents. Currently, 16 judges on that Circuit were appointed by Democrats, 11 by Republicans, and two seats are open.
One of those seats is about to be filled by a former clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. His name is Daniel Bress, and his nomination was opposed by both Senators from California, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. That, more than anything else, made his nomination very appealing. He was confirmed to the post by the full Senate on Wednesday in a vote that ran along party lines.
In addition to these bench seats filled, Trump, and by extension Mitch McConnell’s Senate, has also managed to flip the third circuit that includes the states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
