With All Eyes On Supreme Court Hearing, Democrats Quietly Confirm 8 Other Judges

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

This week on Capitol Hill, all eyes were on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s high-profile and historic confirmation hearing.

But in the background, Senate Democrats were quietly advancing lots of President Joe Biden’s other nominees to lifetime federal court seats — some of whom were also historic.

Democrats teed up and confirmed eight of Biden’s court picks as Jackson’s hearing was underway. That’s a large number of judges to process in a matter of days and brings Biden’s total number of confirmed judges to 56 — adding to his record of confirming more lifetime federal judges than decades of past presidents by this point in their terms.

One of the judicial nominees in this week’s mix was Alison Nathan, 49, who will now sit on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Nathan has served as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York since 2011, and she previously served as associate White House counsel for President Barack Obama.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/with-all-eyes-on-supreme-court-hearing-democrats-quietly-confirm-8-other-judges/ar-AAVuZgg

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Very smart of us! I am pleased to read that our Senate Dems have moved this quickly.

Lifetime federal court seats.

How sweet it is.

[Cha]

2. Real Justice! TY!

💙💛

[bucolic_frolic]

3. "Quietly" "in the background"

Sounds like they sneaked into office while Republicans slept. What were the votes on these nominees?

[DarthDem]

4. The Votes

Not snuck in while the GOPers slept; it's just that the media doesn't have the bandwidth or interest to report this sort of thing. It doesn't drive clicks.


On Judge Alison Nathan for the 2nd Circuit:

49-47. Casey, Manchin, Sanders, and Shaheen did not vote. Rs voting in favor were Collins, Graham, and Kennedy.

On Ruth Montenegro for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California:

55-41. Casey, Manchin, Shaheen, and Sullivan did not vote. Rs voting in favor were Collins, Graham, Grassley, McConnell, Murkowski, Rounds, Tillis, and Young.

On Victoria Calvert for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia:

50-46. Casey, Manchin, Shaheen, and Sullivan did not vote. Rs voting in favor were Collins, Graham, and Murkowski.

On Julie Rubin for the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland:

51-46. Casey, Manchin, and Shaheen did not vote. Rs voting in favor were Collins, Graham, Murkowski and Tillis.

On Hector Gonzalez for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York:

52-45. Casey, Manchin, and Shaheen did not vote. Rs voting in favor were Collins, Graham, Murkowski, McConnell, and Tillis.

On John Chun for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington:

49-47. Casey, Manchin, Shaheen and Sanders did not vote. Rs voting in favor were Collins, Graham, and Murkowski.

On Cristina Silva for the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada:

50-46. Casey, Manchin, Shaheen and Sanders did not vote. Rs voting in favor were Collins, Graham, Murkowski and Portman.

On Anne Rachel Traum for the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada:

49-47. Casey, Manchin, Shaheen and Sanders did not vote. Rs voting in favor were Collins, Graham, and Murkowski.



Note that despite all of his roughly simultaneous antics at Judge Jackson's confirmation hearing, Graham voted for every single one of these nominees, as did Collins. Murkowksi voted for all seven of the district court nominees.

No Democrat voted against any of the nominees. Sinema voted for all eight of them.

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Thank you for that research and effort, surely other DUers would like to know as well

To me those votes seem narrow, but somehow we got a cadre of Republicans and an occasional McConnell and Tillis. I won't even begin to ask or understand why. I assume they just had certain criteria that matches specific nominees.

[DarthDem]

7. Right

It's not really worth analyzing, not because it isn't interesting, but because we just don't have enough information to know the real story and are unlikely ever to get it. Senators often have individual reasons for bucking their party on confirmations by a president of the other party, which may include knowing the nominee or someone that sponsored the nominee.

The votes are narrow. However, note that Collins, Graham and Murkowksi voted for every district court nominee, and Collins and Graham for Judge Nathan for the Second Circuit as well. This contrasts with the silliness that Graham pulled (at about the same time) during Judge Jackson's SCOTUS confirmation hearings. That was all just theater for the base. And the media fuels these perceptions by laziness or lack of interest in federal court nominations below the SCOTUS level.

On edit, you're welcome for the details. It's an interest of mine. I wonder if the wider DU community would be interested as you said? I can put it in an OP . . . ?

[BlueCheeseAgain]

6. That's interesting.

In all of those, the votes would have failed had the R's all voted against. I wonder if there was some understanding that Collins, Graham, and Murkowski were voting yes-- otherwise Schumer would have waited for the other Dems to be available.