The Senate is running out the clock on Donald Trump's judicial picks, and the midterm calendar gives the establishment every excuse to leave constitutionalists stranded on the bench.
Bloomberg Tax News reports that while the Republican-led chamber cleared nearly all pending nominations before recess, it will have precious little floor time after senators return — and the White House has yet to name picks for a number of vacancies. The squeeze is real: the Senate confirmed 53 Article III judges so far in Trump's second term, slightly ahead of the 51 confirmed at the same point in his first. But that pace is about to hit a wall. The summer surge — three appeals court judges and five trial court picks in July alone — was the chamber playing catch-up after confirming more judges in June and July than in the first five months of the year combined.
The numbers tell the story of a Senate that can move when it wants to. The same body that fast-tracked liberal activists to the federal bench under Biden now drags its feet on judges who might actually read the Constitution as written. Bloomberg notes Trump has still not announced nominees for several open seats — meaning those vacancies will linger into an election year when confirmation votes become politically inconvenient for incumbents in both parties.
This is the bipartisan failure in action. Republicans control the chamber and could force floor votes, but leadership prefers the cover of a crowded calendar. Democrats, meanwhile, have every incentive to run out the clock. The result: empty courtrooms and vacancies that the permanent Washington class is in no hurry to fill with anyone who might upset the administrative state's apple cart.
The Arkansas Online and International Business Times, for their part, weren't covering the judicial squeeze at all — one was focused on the administration's Jones Act waiver extension for oil transport, the other on foreign developers paying millions to license Trump's name. Neither touched the courts story, leaving Bloomberg as the only outlet in this batch tracking the confirmation pipeline that actually shapes Americans' daily lives.
The question now is whether Trump forces the Senate's hand by flooding the zone with nominations when senators return, or whether the swamp's oldest trick — doing nothing and blaming the calendar — wins again.
