Biden's Controversial Judicial Nominees

The Left spent four years complaining about the rate that the Trump Administration was filling federal judicial vacancies and attempting to paint nominees as outside of the mainstream. However, a project tracking judicial nominations from The Heritage Foundation illustrates that President Biden has made significantly more appointments than President Trump did at this point in his administration, and the nominees themselves are more controversial. 

President Biden has made 76 appointments compared to President Trump's 52 by August 22nd during the second year of his term. The average number of "no" votes on President Biden's appointees are 38.9 compared to 19.2 "no" votes on President Trump's appointees.

Additionally, President Biden is only 13 nominations away from matching President Trump's total number of Article III Court nominations.


Tables produced by The Heritage Foundation.

The average number of "no" votes isn't the only indicator of how radical Biden judicial nominees are. Many of his nominations have required a discharge petition to overcome a tie vote in the Judiciary Committee and be voted on by the full Senate including the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson.

And some nominees like Nancy Abudu are so radical that the Democrats have been slow to file such petitions. Abudu's nomination to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals hasn't been moved on since it failed to receive a favorable report by the Judiciary Committee in May. As RNLA wrote in its letter opposing Abudu's nomination: "Ms. Abudu has shown that she is not capable of impartiality and that her radical views are outside even the progressive mainstream."

Judicial nominations will undoubtedly be one of the lasting impacts of the Biden Administration, as it has been for the presidency of Donald Trump. Yet, instead of judges that respect the rule of law, Biden’s controversial nominees will surely present problems in decades to come.