Progressives demand faster pace on appointing judges

WASHINGTON — With an extended summer recess looming and their majority at risk in November elections, Senate Democrats were facing the prospect of allowing dozens of judicial vacancies to go unfilled by President Joe Biden this year, and under pressure from progressive activists to move more quickly and aggressively to push them through.

Biden and Democrats have installed scores of the president’s picks on the federal bench to offset the conservative imprint of the Trump era, a bright spot for the Biden administration despite Democrats’ tight majorities in Congress. But progressive groups warned that unless Democrats took more aggressive steps and quickened their pace, the party could lose its chance to reshape the courts.

Progressives have called for Democrats to stay in session in August, when they were scheduled to have a four-week recess, to hold hearings on nominees, teeing them up for floor votes later this fall. And they have pushed Democrats to abandon the “blue slip” practice that effectively grants home-state senators veto power over candidates for federal district court judges in their states, which has limited the administration’s ability to win confirmation of district court nominees in states represented by Republicans.

Time is of the essence, the activists argue, because Republicans are likely to drastically slow — if not halt — the confirmation of Biden-nominated judges if they win the majority in midterm elections this fall. At their current pace, Democrats face the prospect of not being able to fill as many as 60 district and appellate court vacancies by the end of the year. Federal judges have been retiring or taking senior status faster than the White House has been able to identify nominees and send them to the Senate for consideration, a process that can consume months.

“This is a historic opportunity to continue the wonderful progress that has been made under the Biden administration to correct the harm that has been done to the federal judiciary,” said Russ Feingold, a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin who leads the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal group. “This is a moment to play hardball.”

The advocacy groups have applied pressure through a digital advertising campaign aimed at Sen. Dick Durbin, D-ill. and the Judiciary Committee chair, and op-eds, among other tactics.

Feingold and others said that, at a minimum, Democrats should use the August recess to conduct Judiciary Committee hearings. In a break with past practice, Republicans in 2018 held confirmation hearings during their August recess.

The groups would also like to see Democrats increase the number of nominees considered at each hearing.

“Republicans held hearings during recess to move more Trump judges, and Democrats should now do the same,” said Chris Kang, general counsel for Demand Justice, a progressive group. “This is not radical; there is recent precedent for it that just needs to be followed.”

When the Republican majority and Donald Trump’s presidency seemed in danger in 2020, Sen. Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., then the majority leader, adopted a mantra of “leave no vacancy behind” and followed a policy of trying to fill every possible judicial opening before a shift in power. But Republicans had not been at the mercy of Democrats for cooperation