President Joe Biden is in a race against time as he tries to top former President Donald Trump’s federal judge appointment tally.
During his four-year term, Trump successfully appointed 234 Article III judges — in other words, those judicial positions that require senate approval, which includes the U.S. Supreme Court, courts of appeals and federal district courts.
Meanwhile, Biden is slightly outpacing Trump, having successfully placed his 200th appointee on the bench last month. Trump had 196 at the same point in his presidency, according to Politico.
“We want to keep up a steady pace of nominations, and we’d like to see from the Senate an accompanying steady pace of confirmations,” Phil Brest, the White House senior counsel in charge of nominations, told the news outlet. “Of course, we would love the opportunity to exceed Trump’s numbers.”
However, a number Biden won’t be able to top Trump on is the number of court of appeals appointments made. In just one term, Trump placed 54 on the bench, which is just one shy of Barack Obama’s total in two terms, according to Pew Research Center.
Biden has 42 so far, and there just aren’t enough openings to beat Trump.
And of course, Trump placed three justices on the Supreme Court to Biden’s one, to date.
On May 22, Biden put out a statement bragging about hitting the 200 judges overall milestone mark.
“Today, we reached another milestone in the effort to protect the freedoms and liberties of all Americans: the confirmation of the 200th federal judge since I took office,” the president said.
“These judges are exceptionally well-qualified. They come from every walk of life, and collectively, they form the most diverse group of judicial appointees ever put forward by a President – 64% are women and 62% are people of color,” he added.
About one-quarter of Trump’s appointments were women and one in six were minorities, according to Pew Research.
Biden also said that his appointees were “committed to principles that are at the core of our democracy: independence, freedom, and liberty.”
What he did not say was whether they were committed to upholding the Constitution; rather, he listed Democratic Party policy priorities the judges would be protecting.
“Judges matter. These men and women have the power to uphold basic rights or to roll them back,” Biden said.
“They hear cases that decide whether women have the freedom to make their own reproductive healthcare decisions; whether Americans have the freedom to cast their ballots; whether workers have the freedom to unionize and make a living wage for their families; and whether children have the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water,” he added.
So based on Biden’s statement alone, it seems clear his criteria for choosing judges were based on whether they checked certain gender or ethnic boxes or shared the Democratic view that the courts are a place to pursue their policy agenda when they don’t have the votes to do it legislatively.
The Washington Post reported, “Biden’s push to remake the federal judiciary extends far beyond racial and gender lines. He has nominated … several judges who come from diverse professional backgrounds such as civil rights lawyers, labor lawyers and public defenders, as well as those who are openly LGBTQ.”
“Judge Beth Robinson, for example, is the first openly gay woman to serve on any federal appeals court, and Nicole G. Berner is the first openly gay judge and first labor lawyer on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit,” the Post said.
Biden’s most high-profile diversity pick to date was his Supreme Court appointee, Ketanji Brown Jackson. He had promised to put the first black woman on the bench if a vacancy opened up.
An opening was looking somewhat doubtful, so Democrats launched a pressure campaign to get Justice Stephen Breyer to step down in 2022. In an unusual move, Senate Democrats held Jackson’s confirmation hearing even before Breyer left the bench, perhaps in case he had second thoughts.
The most memorable moment in Jackson’s confirmation hearing was when she upheld leftist talking points by saying she could not define what a woman was; nor could she agree with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s observation that men and women have physical differences.
SEN. BLACKBURN: “Can you provide a definition of the word ‘woman’?”
JACKSON: “No, I can’t”
BLACKBURN: “You can’t?”
JACKSON: “I’m not a biologist” pic.twitter.com/i7Rg83z5Y4
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 23, 2022
More recently, in a display of a complete lack of an understanding of the purpose of the Bill of Rights, Jackson said the First Amendment “hamstrings” government officials from taking action to quell what they deem misinformation.
Placing restrictions on government power is the point of the Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of religion, freedom of the press — these are all fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment.
Other Biden nominees appeared to also lack a basic understanding of the Constitution.
For example, Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren, Biden’s pick for a federal district court judgeship in Washington state, could not say what Article II or Article V in the Constitution addresses.
Article I is about Congress, Article II is about the executive branch, Article III, the judiciary — in other words, the three branches of government. That’s Schoolhouse Rock stuff.
Article IV addresses states’ relations to each other and Article V deals with how the Constitution can be amended.
One can perhaps excuse not knowing what Article V is off the top of one’s head, but someone seeking a lifetime appointment on the federal bench, who presumably went to law school and passed a state bar, not knowing what the first three articles of the Constitution address is unacceptable.
Q: “Judge, tell me what article V of the Constitution does?”
Biden judicial nominee: “Article V is not coming to mind at the moment.”
“How about article II?”
Nominee: “Neither is Article II”
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) January 26, 2023
Meanwhile, Ana de Alba, a California federal district judge who Biden successfully appointed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year, could not explain the concept of the dormant commerce clause during her confirmation hearing.
GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana noted the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled the very week of the hearing in favor of a California ballot measure that set animal welfare standards in the raising of pigs. If those standards were not met, the pork products could not be sold in the state.
The central question in the case was whether California’s law violated the Constitution’s commerce clause, which prevents states from enacting laws that “impose undue burdens on interstate commerce,” Fox News reported. The justices determined it did not.
First-year law school students learn about the commerce clause because it is the constitutional provision upon which so many federal laws and regulations rely.
🚨WATCH:@SenJohnKennedy asked Judge Ana de Alba, a sitting district judge nominated by President Biden to the Ninth Circuit, what the Dormant Commerce Clause is.
Judge de Alba was unable to answer a question any first year law student would know. pic.twitter.com/b5Myj2KZrh
— JCN (@judicialnetwork) May 17, 2023
Then there’s Sara Hill, who Biden appointed to serve as federal district court judge in Oklahoma.
Hill could not explain the difference between a stay and an injunction order, both of which are frequently issued by federal judges.
“A stay order would prohibit, um, sorry. An injunction would restrain the parties from taking action. A stay order … I’m not sure I can, actually can, can give you that,” she said.
🚨President Biden’s district judge nominee Sara Hill was unable to explain to @SenJohnKennedy the difference between a “stay order” and an “injunction.”
How can an individual who wants to be a federal judge possibly not know this?
Senator Durbin even congratulated Hill… pic.twitter.com/6oJAKqhN3I
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) November 15, 2023
An injunction is an order the court issues requiring a party to do or cease doing a specific action, while a stay is an order from the court stopping a legal proceeding from going forward.
When Biden’s top criteria for judicial picks are diversity and leftist political ideology rather than competence and fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law, these are the kinds of lifetime judges the nation gets.
Trump relied heavily on the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation in making his judicial selections. The result of this approach is ending up with judges who treat people equally and fairly under the law, ensuring the nation prospers.
The United States will have to deal with the impact of Biden’s left-wing judges for decades to come.
Hopefully, Trump will win a second term and continue to do the work of placing solid, constitutionally grounded judges on the bench, which will dilute the impact of Biden’s poor choices.
