by Washington Examiner
| December 26, 2019 12:00 AM
President Trump has been more focused and more successful than any modern president in appointing excellent judges to the federal courts. With the help of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump has produced impressive raw numbers in terms of judicial influence.
Still, McConnell is not the Senate majority leader Trump should be thanking. That honor goes to McConnell's predecessor, former Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.
Despite unprecedented, massively obstructive tactics by Senate Democrats, Trump, in fewer than three years, has secured the confirmation of two Supreme Court justices and 50 appeals court judges. In contrast, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, in eight years each, secured just two appointees to the Supreme Court and, respectively, only 62, 61, and 49 appellate judges. At the highest levels of the federal courts, then, Trump is securing appointments at about twice the rate of his three predecessors. At the district court level, Trump has successfully appointed 132 of the 677 judges authorized by law and has an additional 42 nominees pending. In this respect, he is moving at about the same pace as recent presidents.
In total, at all court levels together, Trump’s average number of confirmations per year exceeds every president in history except (barely) for Democrat Jimmy Carter, who enjoyed a large Senate majority and no concerted obstructive efforts by Senate Republicans.
Again, Trump and McConnell have achieved this despite the dilatory tactics of the Democrats, who have forced procedural “cloture†votes an astonishing 131 times on Trump’s judicial nominees, compared to only seven cloture votes in the first three years of all of the previous five presidencies combined.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trumps-judges-are-great-he-has-harry-reid-to-thank
