If they take the Senate, they'll be able to nominate as many judges as possible
The President Nominates judges and senate approves them. That was the idea behind checks & balances. Mitch McConnell was able to block Obama's Federal Judicial appointments during the last 2 years of his presidency ensure 100+ federal judicial seats remained unfilled and then ram through rightwing dare I say unqualified nominees to lifetime federal judgeships under Trump's first turn.
Here is the AI recap
Mitch McConnell was able to leave a historic number of federal judicial seats vacant during President Obama’s final two years by utilizing the strict scheduling and gatekeeping powers of the Senate Majority Leader.
Once Republicans won the Senate majority in the 2014 midterms, McConnell assumed complete control over which executive and judicial nominations were allowed to reach the Senate floor for a vote. He used this power to slow the confirmation process to a near-total standstill.
The Mechanics of the Judicial Blockade
McConnell and Senate Republicans executed this strategy using a few primary tools:
• Controlling the Senate Floor Calendar: The Constitution gives the president the power to nominate judges, but the Senate has the sole power to provide "Advice and Consent". As Majority Leader, McConnell simply chose not to schedule floor votes for the vast majority of Obama's nominees, leaving them languishing on the calendar indefinitely.
• Judiciary Committee Gatekeeping: Under McConnell's leadership, the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee sharply reduced the number of confirmation hearings it held. If a nominee never received a committee hearing, they could not be voted on by the full Senate.
• The "McConnell Rule" (The Merrick Garland Blockade): The most prominent example of this strategy occurred following the death of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. President Obama nominated Chief Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat in March. McConnell preemptively declared that the Senate would not hold hearings, meetings, or votes on any Supreme Court nominee until after the 2016 presidential election, arguing the American public should have a voice in the selection. The seat remained vacant for over 400 days until Donald Trump took office.
The Statistical Impact
By the time President Obama left office in January 2017, the blockade had altered the landscape of the federal judiciary:
• Historical Lows: The Senate under McConnell confirmed judicial nominees at the lowest rate in 30 years. During the final two years of the Obama presidency, the Senate confirmed only 22 formal appellate and district judges.
• Massive Vacancies: This intentional slowdown left over 100 vacancies across the U.S. District Courts and Circuit Courts of Appeals, alongside the single Supreme Court vacancy.
This accumulation of empty seats created a blank canvas for the incoming Trump administration, allowing Republicans to rapidly fill the vacancies with conservative judges and reshape the federal judiciary for a generation.
Mitch McConnell’s judicial strategy didn't just stall Obama's nominees—it set up a pipeline to aggressively reshape the federal judiciary for decades. When the White House flipped, Senate Republicans focused heavily on confirming highly conservative, historically young lawyers to lifetime federal benches.
Here is exactly how the data breaks down:
The Youth Strategy
While no nominees were in their 20s, the administration leaned into youth to maximize how long these judges could hold lifetime power.
• Over Trump's administrations, more than 30 judges in their 30s have been appointed to lifetime seats.
• By comparison, Barack Obama appointed only 9 judges in their 30s during his entire eight years.
• The youngest nominees—including Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, Katie Lane, and Samuel Adkisson—were tapped at just 33 years old.
The Lack of Trial Experience
To seat these young ideologues quickly, traditional standards of trial experience were frequently bypassed, leading to intense pushback from legal groups:
• The American Bar Association (ABA) considers 12 years of legal practice the baseline minimum to be qualified for a federal judge.
• Because many of these picks fell well short of that standard, a historic number of nominees were officially rated "Not Qualified" by the ABA.
• Some of these lifetime appointees had never served as lead counsel in a trial, never argued a motion in court, and never picked a jury before being given the gavel.
For conservative legal architects like the Federalist Society, the lack of traditional trial experience was seen as secondary to ideological alignment and youth, ensuring a conservative judicial majority that will last for a generation.
