Damn good question. He’s got to get better results than President Obama did.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson
A potential showdown looms over Texas appointments after the White House tapped Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Dallas Democrat, to lead judicial vetting efforts that have traditionally been handled by the state’s Republican senators.
The arrangement, while not unprecedented, may foreshadow bruising partisan battles in the coming months over lifetime appointments to the bench, as well as key U.S. attorney spots.
House members have no defined role in that confirmation process, which instead works through the Senate. But there is an inherent tension in Texas these days: Democrats control the White House and Senate, while Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are stalwart conservatives.
Johnson, a 15-term lawmaker who said the White House had tasked her to work with other Texas Democrats, channeled years of Democratic complaints that the GOP has stiffed them on judicial nominations by saying there is now “some expectation from our delegation that we have input.”
“It worked very well under Sen. [Phil] Gramm and Sen. [Kay Bailey] Hutchison,” she explained, referring to the two Texas Republicans who preceded Cornyn and Cruz in the Senate. “It hasn’t worked as well under Sen. Cornyn and Sen. Cruz.”
Cornyn and Cruz have pushed back on Democrats’ criticism that they’ve slow-walked the process under Democratic presidents and pressed fast-forward under GOP ones.
But the big question now is whether President Joe Biden and other Democrats — including Sen. Dick Durbin, the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee — will really play hardball with the Texas Republicans by ignoring traditions designed to protect senators in the political minority.
[…]
There’s still the real potential for clashes in Texas over judicial nominations, though it could take some time for those disputes to materialize. While a new slate of U.S. attorneys will need to be dealt with relatively soon, there are currently no vacancies on the federal bench in Texas.
Much of the ongoing tension can be explained by how the status quo came about on Texas’ four district courts and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the appellate court that covers the state.
Trump — working with Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate — made federal judges a centerpiece of his four years in the White House, confirming them at a far faster pace than his predecessors, both Democrats and Republicans.
In Texas, Trump-appointed judges now comprise a plurality on the lower federal courts.
With a Republican in the White House and a GOP-run Senate, Cornyn and Cruz didn’t really need to seek input from Texas Democrats. Johnson, while saying she respects that the senators “are the senators,” fumed that “we didn’t even get a question or a call” over the last four years.
But the bigger Democratic complaint has centered on why Trump had so many vacancies to fill in the first place.
Democrats have long ripped Republicans for grinding judicial confirmations to a crawl after the GOP won the Senate in the latter stages of former President Barack Obama’s tenure. Trump often reveled in the vacancies he inherited, much to the chagrin of liberals in Texas and beyond.
“While we were able to find some very good judges, overall I don’t think the process worked very well,” said Christopher Kang, who oversaw the judicial nomination process under Obama. “Sens. Cornyn and Cruz were very challenging to work with, were very slow to work with.”
I’ve already discussed the US Attorney situation, which was an exercise in slow-walking in 2009-2010. I suppose it can serve as a way for Cornyn and Cruz to demonstrate that things will be different this time, but I see no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. I say the Senators are welcome to put forth whatever names they want to, and if they’re sufficiently qualified and suitable, they can get in the queue alongside the nominees that Rep. Johnson and others provide. Otherwise, they can sit back and vote on the nominees like any other Senator, assuming that doesn’t conflict with Sen. Cruz’s busy travel schedule.
I don’t see what the problem is here, really. It seems all the Trump appointed judges end up ruling like Dem. judges anyway, so what’s the point of complaining? You folks got what you wanted.
Play by the same rules as the fascists/Republicans.
Bill, is your undertone that Trump appointed judges should rule however Trump would want? As opposed to ruling based on the actual law?
I think Trump has been shocked that judges he appointed aren’t following his wishes, but he’s too stupid and corrupt to understand why.
Ross,
If judges aren’t going to make rulings based on their political ideology, then who gives a crap who appointed them? It would be a moot issue, but as Kuff’s post indicates, it is not a moot issue. It’s why folks go judge shopping when filing suit. This is the whole point. Dems expect their judges to back their play, just as Trump (wrongly) assumed his judges would back HIS play.
Is your position now that that does NOT happen? Ruth Ginsberg, Sotomayor and Kagan are down with the cause liberals whose decisions reflect that, just as Scalia and Thomas decisions reflected their conservative leanings.
(and yes, I know I referenced justices that are no longer with us)