President
Donald Trump should give special thanks to two U.S. Senators this Thanksgiving
weekend. One is still serving in the Senate, the other recently retired. One is
a Republican. The other a Democrat. And what should President Trump be thanking
them for? Quite simply they have handed him one of the biggest victories any
president could claim in the past 45 years.
Yes, this has happened even as one of the most
widely covered stories of the past year has been President Trump's difficulties
in working with Congress. The growing rift between him and Republican Senators
John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker alone has made headlines for months.
For a U.S. president to have this many public feuds with senators from his own
party this early in his presidency is really unprecedented and makes for hot
news copy.
But that story ignores a bigger and longer-lasting
development in the federal judiciary. That brings us first to naming the
Republican gift giver: Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa. The longtime member of
Congress has big time clout as the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
And Grassley has just used that clout to eliminate one of the final hurdles in
the already furious pace of Trump administration judicial appointments to the
federal bench.
Late last week, Grassley decided not to honor a Senate tradition of
holding up hearings for judicial nominees who aren't cleared by their own home
state senators. That tradition is known as the "blue slip
courtesy" born out of time before nationwide communication technology when
a given state's senators had access to much more information about nominees
than their colleagues from the rest of the country. Grassley correctly noted
that Democrats were now trying to use the blue slips tradition
to replace the filibuster, and he's having none of that. As recently
as last month, the Democrats and much of the news media's punditry were
expecting Grassley, who is no fan of the president, to keep the blue slip tradition in
place. But Grassley gave Trump this very special gift instead.
And that brings us to the Democrat who provided the
initial generous source of President Trump's solid triumph: Former Senate
Majority Leader, and Democrat, Harry Reid. Reid is a major reason this good
fortune has befallen President Trump because Reid was the one who killed the filibuster rule for
judicial nominees in 2013. And when he killed it, it was gone
for good.
Republicans were powerless to stop a series of
President Obama's judicial nominees after that. That is, until they won control
of the Senate in the 2014 elections. The GOP may have failed at using that
majority to achieve much, especially making even a dent in Obamacare. But they
were able to freeze the Obama nomination process in its tracks, most notably by
delaying and eventually killing Merrick Garland's nomination for the Supreme
Court.
That long period of confirmation obstruction has
given President Trump a huge number of seats to fill; twice as many as
President Obama's also large number of vacancies when he took office in 2009.
The Christian Science Monitor reports this is likely the most vacancies for a president to
fill in 40 years. And the Trump team hasn't been wasting much
time.
For those who believe President Trump won the 2016 election thanks to a
series of Democratic Party errors, this is cut from the exact same
cloth.
Consider that as of November 3rd, 13 Trump nominees to the courts have
been confirmed this year. The big name is Supreme Court
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, but we also have eight new federal appeals
court judges, and four new U.S. district court judges. President Trump has now
already surpassed the last four presidents' records for first-year judifical
confirmations. And he's even tied President Ronald Reagan number of appeals
court confirmations in year one.
But this isn't just about sheer numbers, it's about
ideology too. While President Trump and conservatives have diverged in matters
of policy several times over the past year, the judicial nomination process is
decidedly not one of them. The nominees sent to the Senate from the White House
are more conservative and even younger than
what we saw during President George W. Bush's two terms in office.
In case the importance of making an impact on the
courts is lost on anyone, just note the many setbacks the Trump administration
has suffered this year alone thanks to the courts. Delays and changes to the
White House-imposed travel and immigration bans have grabbed the most attention.
But the administration is also dealing with judicial push back and other
potential hurdles on everything from its opposition to the AT&T-Time Warner
merger to its transgender military ban.
Now fast forward a couple of years where the Trump
judicial appointment surge will have set in across the federal system. Just for
this administration alone, that could make a huge difference. And for
conservative causes and cases over time, it will be even more significant.
Sure, the tax reform and Obamacare repeal bills may
be jeopardized by internal spats between the GOP and the White House. But real
history is being made in the courts all thanks to a bad bet made by Senator
Reid and remarkable cooperation between the Trump team, Senator Grassley, and
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. While the fights with other
senators like Flake et al may grab headlines, these judicial confirmations will
have a much bigger impact.
And unless the Democrats win control of the Senate
in 2018, there's nothing they can do about it.
So on this Thanksgiving weekend the most grateful
person in America should be President Trump. An unlikely set of benefactors has
truly given him the political gift that will keep on giving.
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