Half of All Federal Judges Could Be Trump Appointees Within 4 Years

As we continue to stare down the inevitably heinous fallout of a second Trump presidency, there’s really no bottom to how bad things can and likely will get. Some experts predict Trump will dismantle the National Labor Relations Board, or direct his varying appointees to wield the FDA and Justice Department to effectively ban medication abortion; Trump, himself, has told us that he will see to a mass deportation campaign within days of taking office. And, according to the legal news website Balls and Strikes, about half of all federal court judges could be Trump appointees by the end of his second term. 

Over the next four years, about 250 sitting federal judges will be eligible for “senior status,” a form of semi-retirement that creates a judicial vacancy, allowing the sitting president to appoint a replacement. Balls and Strikes note that “between deaths, retirements, and assumptions of senior status,” this will open the door for Trump to leave an indelible, near-permanent mark on the federal judiciary; he could appoint a slate of 25-year-old neo-Nazis and incels who will uphold his platform of rabidly anti-women, anti-LGBTQ, anti-labor, anti-immigrant policies long after he’s gone. Because Republicans won control of the Senate, starting January 20, they’ll also fully control the judicial nomination and confirmation process. So, we have a lot to look forward to!

In Trump’s first term, he reshaped the entire judiciary by appointing a whopping 234 federal judges—about a quarter of all judges. Add another 250, if Ball and Strikes’ prediction comes true, and that’s about half of all 890 federal judges. Sources close to Trump and Republican leaders told NBC News that confirming right-wing federal judges as quickly and efficiently as possible will be a top priority between Trump and the GOP-led Senate. Many of these appointees will likely be hand-picked by the far-right Federalist Society, which played an outsized role in Trump’s judicial picks during his first term. The organization famously requires potential picks to pass a hard-line anti-abortion litmus test.

Trump’s judicial picks from his first term include Matthew Kacsmaryk of the District Court for the Northern District of Texas, an anti-abortion extremist who’s previously worked closely with top Republicans and helped lead the conservative judicial war on medication abortion last year. Trump also first appointed now-Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017 before appointing her to the Supreme Court in 2020.

But it’s not just the lower courts. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are 76 and 74 respectively; once they retire, Trump can appoint their replacements. At that point, he’ll have single-handedly appointed the majority of the Supreme Court bench, after appointing three of the justices (Neil Gorsuch, alleged sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh, and Barrett) in his first term. Trump’s conservative-majority court already struck down Roe v. Wade so, as the GOP revs up attacks on birth control, IVF, interstate abortion travel, and legal access to medication abortion, it’s already terrifying to think of what cases they’ll take on next—let alone what young replacements for Thomas and Alito could mean for an entire generation or two of Americans.

His shortlist is appalling. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern reports that at the top of that list are two, far-right Trump appointees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit: Andrew Oldham and James Ho. Both are long-term members of the Federalist Society who spent most of last year trying to effectively ban medication abortion, with Ho arguing that mifepristone, one of the two main abortion pills, should be taken off the market altogether and abortion providers who ship it to patients face federal criminal charges. Confronted by the reality that anti-abortion doctors have no standing to challenge the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, Ho made the especially vile and nonsensical argument that doctors do have standing because they “delight in working with their unborn patients—and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.” Women should all be forced by the state to birth babies against their will, argues a potential Supreme Court justice, because doctors deserve to revel in the sound of a newborn’s noxious crying. Love that for us!

Another name being floated right now for dystopian Trump legal picks is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Back in May, Trump called Paxton “a very talented guy” who he’d consider appointing as U.S. attorney general. If Paxton’s name sounds familiar, you probably know him from when he sued the Biden administration for reminding doctors of the federal law (EMTALA) that requires them to provide emergency stabilizing health care, including abortion. More recently, Paxton sued the Biden administration over a common-sense policy to protect traveling abortion patients’ medical data from being accessed by law enforcement; Paxton argued this limited Texas’ ability to enforce its abortion ban, signaling interest in policing interstate abortion travel. He’s also wielded his position to enact a legal war of intimidation and harassment on Texas abortion funds. Again: We have just so much to look forward to!!!

In the final weeks of Biden’s presidency, there’s greater urgency than ever for the Democratic-majority Senate to confirm Biden’s 30 final nominees for vacant federal judge seats before the nominations expire and Trump has free reign to fill those vacancies, too.