Trump Passes Historic Judicial Appointments Threshold Shortly Before Schumer’s SCOTUS Threat

While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s controversial comments directed at President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees made headlines, the chief executive recently surpassed a historic benchmark in the placement of judges on the federal bench, including both the appeals court and district court levels.

“President Trump has set the all-time record for the number of judges appointed to the critically important federal courts of appeals,” Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, told The Western Journal.

So far, Trump has appointed 51 federal court of appeals judges.

“He’s No. 2 overall for the number of all Article III judges appointed at this point in any presidency,” Davis said.

Only Jimmy Carter had a higher total — 211 versus 193 — mainly because Congress created many new judicial positions during his term in office.

Thomas Jipping — a senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation and former chief legal counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee — wrote that Carter signed legislation in 1978 establishing 151 judgeships.

The since-deceased Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, proceeded to hold 139 confirmation hearings in 1979 alone (Carter’s third year in office), leading to 135 successful new judicial appointments, which is the annual record to this day.

Putting aside Carter’s total as an outlier, Bill Clinton had appointed the most judges to the federal bench of any president in U.S. history, 186, at the same point of their tenure in office.

However, Trump surpassed him during the middle of last month, thanks in part to the confirmation of four new district court judges.

And last week, the Senate confirmed Trump’s nomination of Silvia Carreño-Coll to the federal district court in Puerto Rico in a unanimous 96-0 vote.

“President Trump is doing a phenomenal job in filling the federal judiciary with highly qualified originalists and textualists judges, just like the president said he would when he campaigned for office,” Davis said.

Jipping said he agreed, noting in a statement to The Western Journal that Trump’s success has come despite an “unprecedented resistance campaign.”

Schumer has forced cloture votes for 77 percent of Trump’s nominees, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Judicial Tracker.