The Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate has launched a “campaign” to confirm as many new federal judges nominated by President Joe Biden as possible, reports Voice of America.
Democrats are acting quickly to ensure they do not miss the opportunity to fill vacant seats that Republican and newly elected President Donald Trump could fill after taking office on January 20 next year.
As Republicans prepare to take control of the Senate on January 3, the Senate held a vote on one of Biden’s judicial nominees, former prosecutor April Perry, for the first time since Trump’s victory in the presidential election on November 5.
The Senate voted 51-44 in favor of Perry becoming a District Court judge in Illinois.
Biden has announced the names of a total of 30 other judicial nominees awaiting Senate confirmation. Sixteen of them have already been reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and are awaiting final confirmation by the full Senate. Another 14 nominees are still awaiting committee review.
The U.S. Constitution grants the Senate the authority to confirm the president’s nominees for lifetime positions in the federal judiciary.
“We will do as much as we can,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement.
Trump made 234 judicial appointments during his first four years in office, the second-largest number by any president in a single term, and succeeded in appointing three new justices to shift the judiciary to the right—including creating a conservative 6-3 majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Biden has appointed numerous liberal judges. Since the beginning of his presidency in 2021, the Senate has confirmed 214 of Biden’s nominees, including liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
About two-thirds of those confirmed were women, and the same proportion were from racial minorities.
Senate Democrats are under pressure to quickly confirm the remaining nominees, as well as any new Biden appointments he may push through in the final weeks of his presidency.
How many nominees Senate Democrats will be able to confirm remains to be seen, it is added.
A simple majority is required to confirm judicial nominees.
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Source: N1
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