Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has made confirming conservative judges his singular focus. In 2018 he described his goal at a gala of the Federalist Society, the four-decades-old legal network that’s become the pipeline for Republican judicial appointees: It’s “to do everything we can, for as long as we can, to transform the federal judiciary, because everything else we do is transitory.”
The previous two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Obama, each left their Republican successors more than 100 openings among the roughly 850 seats on district and appeals courts, because Senate Republicans blocked many of their nominees. The other vacancy Obama famously left was the one that should have gone to his third Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, but for McConnell’s brazen blockade in 2016 on grounds that the president elected in November should fill the seat.
McConnell had the Senate continue to confirm judges even after Trump’s defeat in 2020, vowing he’d “leave no vacancy behind.” Not since 1897 had the Senate confirmed a judicial nominee of a defeated president. It confirmed 14 of Trump’s.
The Trump years
Trump’s 226 successful appointments to the trial, appellate, and Supreme courts in a single term will stand as one of his foremost legacies, and all but certainly his most enduring.
When Trump left office, his picks comprised one-third of the Supreme Court, 30% of the 13 circuit courts, and more than one-quarter of the judges presiding over the nation’s 94 district courts. He appointed 54 judges to the circuit courts that are the final word on most appeals—just one less than Obama selected over eight years.
https://time.com/6074707/republicans...ess-mcconnell/
SCOTUS is pretty much a political branch at this point imo.
You can thank Mitch McConnell.
A few more political stunts like they did with the Texas abortion law and Id say pack it with an absurd 50 justices. Make it the complete farce it is becoming.