DeSantis Urges Senate GOP to ‘Pull All-Nighters’ and Fill Every Judicial Vacancy Before January
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged Senate Republicans on Friday to fill every federal judicial vacancy during the lame-duck session, telling them to “pull all-nighters for as long as it takes” before Democrats take the chamber on Jan. 3.
“Every single federal judicial vacancy needs to be filled in the lame duck session,” DeSantis posted on X. “The Senate should pull all-nighters for as long as it takes. Democrats wont confirm a single Trump judge once they take over.”
Democrats are projected to hold at least 54 Senate seats starting Jan. 3, ending the easy confirmation path President Donald Trump enjoyed after returning to office. Trump has seen 56 life-tenured judges confirmed in his second term, on top of 234 from his first, Minnesota Lawyer reported, citing Reuters.
More than 20 judicial nominees remain pending, including four appeals-court picks, Bloomberg Law reported. Top priorities include U.S. District Judge Anna St. John and Phelps Dunbar partner Todd Butler for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Outgoing Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has already teed up back-to-back nomination hearings starting Nov. 10 — a break from the panel’s usual every-other-week cadence — over Democratic objections.
That schedule would let the committee process nine nominees still awaiting hearings. Another 13 have already appeared before the panel and could reach floor votes before Christmas, according to the Reuters account carried by Minnesota Lawyer.
White House Expects Full Confirmations
A White House official said the administration expects every pending nominee to be confirmed this year. Rob Luther, a George Mason University law professor who worked judicial nominations in Trump’s first-term White House Counsel’s Office, told Reuters he likewise expects “every judicial nominee who has been nominated to date to be confirmed.”
Once January arrives, confirmations are expected to slow to a trickle. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the likely next Judiciary chairman after Sen. Dick Durbin’s retirement, has promised “accountability” and a “hard reset” on the nominations process.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has already vowed Democrats will not allow a “right-winger” onto the Supreme Court and declared “the days of Trump’s supplicant Senate are over,” comments that frame why conservatives want every lower-court seat locked down now.
University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said he expects “a fair amount of Democratic push to not accommodate the kind of people who have been confirmed in Trump 2.0.” Progressive groups are already urging a hard line against nominees who decline to affirm the 2020 election result.
Attendance among departing senators and competing legislative priorities could still snarl the rush even before Democrats take the gavel. DeSantis’ “roll in the cots” message is aimed at making judicial confirmations the non-negotiable priority of the next seven weeks.
For a Republican Party that just lost the Senate, the lame duck is the last window to entrench Trump’s second-term imprint on the appellate bench before Whitehouse and Schumer can freeze the pipeline.
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