Grassley Schedules Lame-Duck Judge Blitz Before Democrats Take the Senate
Republicans are racing the calendar on judges. With Democrats set to hold at least 54 Senate seats starting Jan. 3, the easy path President Donald Trump used to reshape the federal courts is about to close, Reuters reported Wednesday.
Trump’s second term has already produced 56 confirmed life-tenured judges, on top of the 234 appointments from his first term. That pipeline ends when the new Senate majority takes over.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is treating the lame duck as the last clear shot. Over Democratic objections, he scheduled two judicial nomination hearings on back-to-back weeks starting Nov. 10 — a break from the panel’s usual every-two-weeks cadence — that would let the committee process nine pending nominees, Reuters reported. Another 13 nominees who have already gone through committee could still get floor votes before Christmas.
A White House official told Reuters the administration expects all pending judicial nominees to be confirmed this year. Rob Luther, a George Mason University law professor and former White House counsel aide on nominations in Trump’s first term, was just as blunt: he expects every judicial nominee nominated to date to be confirmed, adding, “I don’t think they’re going to leave until that happens,” according to the Reuters account.
The priorities include four pending appeals-court nominees, among them Trump’s two latest picks for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: U.S. District Judge Anna St. John and Todd Butler of Phelps Dunbar, Reuters reported.
The November schedule was not improvised after Election Day. Punchbowl News reported in mid-October that Grassley planned November hearings plus work in the three-week December session to clear as many district and circuit picks as possible before the nomination process resets in January. Punchbowl tallied 10 circuit and 46 district confirmations this Congress, with Grassley’s pace faster than during Trump’s first term.
“I’m keeping my nose to the grindstone and will continue working through the end of this Congress to confirm President Trump’s highly qualified, constitutionalist judges,” Grassley told Punchbowl.
Online conservatives spent Wednesday evening amplifying the same urgency, pressing GOP leaders — including figures around John Thune’s leadership fight — to keep the chamber in session until the backlog is cleared. That social pressure is real; it is not a substitute for what senators themselves have said on the record.
After January, the math flips. Luther told Reuters confirmations would slow to a trickle, with Democrats able to block appeals-court picks and any Supreme Court vacancy. Incoming Judiciary Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), succeeding retiring Sen. Dick Durbin, already promised a hard reset. “Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Trump administration have gutted the committee’s oversight and confirmation authority,” Whitehouse said in a statement carried by Reuters. “There needs to be accountability for years of Republican bad behavior, and a hard reset on the nominations process next Congress.”
Progressive groups are drawing the same line. Alliance for Justice President Rachel Rossi urged Democrats to reject nominees who refuse to affirm the 2020 election results. University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told Reuters he expects “a fair amount of Democratic push to not accommodate the kind of people who have been confirmed in Trump 2.0.”
For Grassley and the White House, the next six weeks are the window. After that, the gavel — and the brakes — move.
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