Senate clears path to confirm Whitney Hermandorfer as first judge of Trump’s second term

The Senate on Thursday cleared the way to confirm the first judicial appointment of President Trump’s second term, marking a slower tempo than at the same point of both his first term and that of President Joe Biden’s.

By a 51-43 party-line vote, the Senate moved to conclude debate on Whitney Hermandorfer’s nod for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, teeing up an expected vote next week.

At this stage of Trump’s first term, the Senate had already confirmed two court nominees — Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Sixth Circuit Judge Amul Thapar.

By next week, that figure will shoot up to three, including US District of Idaho Judge David Nye, who was confirmed in July of 2017.

Meanwhile, former President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats had already wrangled through 14 judges at this stage of 2021.

Driving that gap, in part, appears to be a slower pace of vacancies in the 179 authorized circuit court judgeships and 677 authorized federal district judgeships.

All of the judges on the district courts, where trials take place, and circuit courts, where first-level appeals are heard, can serve for a life term after they are confirmed.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and the Trump administration have been eager to advance as many judges as possible, but are limited by the sparse openings so far.

“One of the great achievements of President Trump’s first term was the confirmation of some 234 judges to the federal bench,” Thune declared on the Senate floor Thursday.

“We’re not facing the number of judicial vacancies this Congress that we faced during President Trump’s first term,” he added. “There are currently only around 50 vacancies on the federal bench.”

Trump had shattered a record at the time with 234 judges, including three Supreme Court justices, confirmed during his first term. Biden then topped that by one, reaching 235, including one Supreme Court justice by the time he departed the White House in January.

In the past, confirmations used to be more cumbersome because they had to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster from the minority party. In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) used the nuclear option to eliminate that in most instances.

Republicans won back the Senate the following year.

Reconfiguring the ideological composition of the judiciary has been a key goal of administrations from both political parties. But the GOP-led Senate has been busy with other priorities as well.

This includes work last month on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law last Friday. During Trump’s first administration, the GOP had gotten their marquee legislation at the time — the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — through December of his first year in office.

Biden had gotten a reconciliation package — the American Rescue Plan COVID-19 stimulus bill — through Congress in March. But it wasn’t until August of his second year in office that he was able to sign his marquee partisan legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act.