[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

it goes way beyond dishonesty. I have my political biases, most of us do. These people are, literally, delusional. The economy has done nothing? Trump doesn’t select federal judges, the senate does?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

While Trump selects judges the Senate played a big role in the number of choices he has and played other games.

Things changed after the 2014 elections, when Republicans won back the chamber and virtually halted processing Obama’s court nominees. At the end of Obama’s term, in 2017, there were 17 circuit court vacancies, with seven nominees pending, and 86 district court vacancies, with 44 nominees pending.

Having so many vacancies to fill gave Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the White House more opportunities to pump up Trump’s confirmation rate in his first two years.

In 2017, McConnell went further than Reid in instituting another partisan rule change. This one did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, ensuring Neil M. Gorsuch would be confirmed — and Brett M. Kavanaugh a year later. And this year he limited the number of hours of post-cloture debate on district court nominees, a move that further greases the skids for more confirmations.

Another change in Senate operations during Trump’s presidency has been the weakening of the “blue slip” process, which allowed home-state senators to essentially sink a nomination if they did not signal their support. Obama and previous presidents were loath to choose nominees who would not pass muster with home-state senators.

McConnell has said that Democratic opposition won’t slow Trump nominees, a sentiment echoed by Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Georgetown’s Rom doesn’t expect doing away with the blue slip process to make a huge difference, but he said it will “allow the majority of the Senate to approve judges more quickly.”

“They’re going to try to put as many judges through that process as possible … and being able to ignore the home-state senators gives them a little bit of an edge,” he said.