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Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to confirm Judge Cory Wilson, a Yale-educated Mississippi appellate judge with extensive state and federal government experience, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Judge Wilson is President Trump’s 200th Article III judicial appointment and 53rd federal circuit judge, filling 25 percent of the federal judiciary after previously shattering the all-time-record pace for appointments to the critically important federal courts of appeals — the last stop for more than 99 percent of all federal appeals.
To put this in perspective, President Obama appointed 55 circuit judges in 8 years; President Trump has appointed 53 in under 4. In doing this, President Trump has filled every federal circuit-court vacancy – something not done by any president in more than 40 years.
SENATE CONFIRMS TRUMP'S 200TH JUDGE, OFFICIALLY FILLS ALL APPEALS COURT VACANCIES
At 200 (and counting), President Trump is #2 of 45 for the pace of all Article III judges – and he would be #1 but for the fact that Congress created 152 new judgeships (25 percent) for President Carter to fill.
Despite the Senate Democrats’ and their leftwing allies’ rhetoric, President Trump’s judges are some of the most qualified in our nation’s history. Don’t simply take my word for it: Leftwing commentator Ian Millhiser wrote extensively on this. Here are some of his gems:
- “Trump hasn’t simply given lots of lifetime appointments to lots of lawyers. He’s filled the bench with some of the smartest, and some of the most ideologically reliable, men and women to be found in the conservative movement.”
- “It’s tempting to assume that Trump’s judicial appointees share the goonish incompetence of the man who placed them on the bench, but this assumption could not be more wrong.”
- “His picks include leading academics, Supreme Court litigators, and already prominent judges who now enjoy even more power within the judiciary.”
- “In other words, based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president’s nominees.”
In less than 4 years, with the strong help from former Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, (my former boss), current Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., President Trump has:
- Reclaimed a Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court of the United States;
- “Flipped” 3 federal circuits — the 2nd, 3rd, and 11th — from majority Democrat-appointed to majority Republican-appointed, making it more likely that the 3-judge panels are comprised of conservatives and more likely that conservatives set circuit law through their en banc decisions;
- Padded the Republican-appointed lead on the 7th Circuit, from +3 to +7; and
- Significantly narrowed the Democrat domination on the once-out-of-whack 9th Circuit, from +11 to +3 on this unruly 29-active-judge court.
This last point is of particular note. When President Trump took office, the Democrat-appointed judges had an 11-seat advantage on the 29-seat 9th Circuit. The President has narrowed that to just 3. And when President Trump wins re-election, he could "flip" the 9th Circuit — once thought impossible before the Trump presidency.
To quote Millhiser again: “There is simply no recent precedent for one president having such a transformative impact on the courts.”
And President Trump could also fill four (or more) Supreme Court retirements in his second term.
A President Biden would almost certainly mean that Democrats also keep the House and win back the Senate. Full Democrat control. Senate Democrats will almost certainly “nuke” the legislative filibuster, lowering the vote threshold from 60 to 51 votes to pass legislation. And Democrats will almost certainly “pack the Court” with 2 (or more) new Supreme Court justices, radically expanding the number of seats from 9 to 11 (or more).
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And like they did for President Carter, Democrats will almost certainly create dozens of new lower-court seats for a President Biden to fill, undoing President Trump’s record-shattering transformation of the federal judiciary.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., in the East Room of the White House during an event about Trump's judicial appointments, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Leftwing radicals, like #DefundThePolice Brian Fallon from Demand Justice — a radical leftwing advocacy group of former Obama appointees who are still bitter over Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing and shocking defeat in 2016 — will demand the appointments of their liberal-judicial activists on Supreme Court and lower courts.
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If conservatives lose the Supreme Court and lower courts to woke, P.C., anti-cop, anti-military, anti-law-and-order, anti-business, results-oriented liberal-judicial activists (seen by some as just Democratic politicians in robes) nominated by a President Biden and confirmed by a Schumer-run Senate, America may never recover.
And the rioting, looting, and other violence we have seen in our major cities over the last several weeks — after Democratic politicians who have locked up Americans for months with arbitrary and discriminatory #StayHome orders — has proven why we need law-and-order judges who will uphold the rule of law . . . and not bow to the rule of the mob.
Indeed, America as we know it is on the line this November — and the federal judiciary is our last line of defense from politicians who cannot or will not protect us from government overreach and the woke mobs.
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In 2016, President Trump campaigned on the promise to transform the federal judiciary with conservative jurists. And he didn’t just talk; Trump actually delivered.
Promises made; promises kept.
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