https://nypost.com/2018/11/17/senate-gop...-nominees/

"Senate Republicans, still furious over Democrats’ smearing of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, have been barreling ahead and confirming President Trump’s judicial nominees at a historically fast pace.

With 84 of his judges already confirmed — 29 of them at the appellate level, a record number for the first two years of a presidential administration — Trump appointees make up one-sixth of the active judges on the federal bench.

“This White House has made the judiciary a priority,” said Carrie Severino of Judicial Crisis Network, a right-leading advocacy group...."

Democrats are upset they are being requested to work. So they skip work anyway.

"...Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s chair, allowed two hearings to go forward in October even while senators were on their pre-election recess, a historical first. Ten candidates vaulted over that procedural hurdle during that quiet time....
Brett Kavanaugh
Grassley calls for feds to probe woman who falsely accused Kavanaugh of sex assault
“The Committee has never before held nominations hearings while the Senate is in recess before an election,” the body’s 10 Democratic members complained in a protest letter Oct 15.

But none of them — not even those who weren’t fighting re-election battles, like Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) — bothered to show up and put up a Spartacus-like challenge to the president’s picks...."

Lots of factors making this possible:

1. A GOP administration that is making judicial nominations a high priority;
2. A GOP majority Senate that is making judicial confirmation a high priority;
3. A realization by White House and Senate alike that very little else is going to get done, especially now that House has flipped to the Dems; and
4. Virtually-unanimous support for these confirmations among all GOP Senators, donors, activists, etc.

Quote:Trump appointees make up one-sixth of the active judges on the federal bench.

That right there is the most important figure in the article. The best thing is the fact that with control over the Senate for the next two years that figure is going to continue to rise.

Keep those judges coming.


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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opini...they-sowed
Some history on how the Democrats started using and quit allowing the filibuster on court nominees.

"...Wednesday is the fifth anniversary of an event that is still changing the course of Senate and judicial history. On Nov. 21, 2013, Senate Democrats exercised the so-called “nuclear option” to abolish the filibusters of nominations they had pioneered a decade earlier.

This is a story of how their best-laid plans went awry.

Senate Democrats started planning a hostile takeover of the judicial appointment process in 2001. Just days after President George W. Bush took office, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said they would use “whatever means necessary” to fight his judicial nominees. At a May retreat in Florida, that vow became a strategy to, as the New York Times described it at the time, “change the ground rules” of the confirmation process....

While the filibuster became part of the legislative process in the early 1800s, it did not become part of the confirmation process until after Republicans captured the Senate in 2002. In just 16 months, from March 2003 to July 2004, Democrats forced the Senate to take 20 cloture votes on 10 different nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Every one of those attempts to end debate failed....

The solution seemed simple: Democrats had to abolish the very nomination filibusters they had used so aggressively just a decade earlier. But it would take 67 votes to directly amend Rule 22 so it no longer required “three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn” to invoke cloture.

On Nov. 21, 2013, Senate Democrats deployed the “nuclear option,” so named because of its explosive impact on Senate rules and traditions. They voted 52-48 to reinterpret the words “three-fifths” in Rule 22 to mean “simple majority.” As Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, would later explain, 52 senators made 60 equal 51.

Democrats got what they wanted when Obama quickly filled those three D.C. Circuit vacancies. In 2014, the Senate confirmed 89 judges, twice the annual average and the third-highest annual total in history...."

Quote:On Nov. 21, 2013, Senate Democrats deployed the “nuclear option,” so named because of its explosive impact on Senate rules and traditions. They voted 52-48 to reinterpret the words “three-fifths” in Rule 22 to mean “simple majority.” As Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, would later explain, 52 senators made 60 equal 51.

Cocaine Mitch spoke from the floor of the Senate that same day (11.21.13). Addressing the majority-Democrats, he observed:

“You’ll regret this. And you may regret this a lot sooner than you think.”