MIKE DAVIS: Lame-duck Senate has unfinished business and a ticking clock
On Jan. 3, 2027, leftist Democrats will take control of the U.S. Senate. The stakes could not be higher. Outgoing Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., must use every remaining day to confirm all of President Trump's pending judicial nominees. That means 23 judges, four for the circuit courts and 19 for the district courts, before the gavel changes hands.
Make no mistake about what comes next. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will block any confirmation to the courts of appeals. He likely won't spare the district courts either. Senate Republicans either finish the judicial job now, or they leave these seats open for the left if Democrats win back the White House in 2028.
Appellate courts are the most consequential. They get the final word in the vast majority of cases. The Supreme Court grants only about 1% of all petitions for review. For nearly every litigant in federal court in America, the circuit court is the last stop.
TRUMP AIMS TO ELEVATE FEDERAL JUDGE LEE RUDOFSKY TO COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
President Trump has nominated four outstanding jurists to strengthen key appellate benches: Anna St. John and Todd Butler to the Fifth Circuit, Lee Rudofsky to the Eighth Circuit, and Dan Domenico to the Tenth Circuit. St. John, Rudofsky, and Domenico already serve with distinction on the district courts in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Colorado. All four are well prepared to step into these roles.
They will succeed judges who have given the country decades of distinguished service: Fifth Circuit Judges Leslie Southwick and Kurt Engelhardt, Eighth Circuit Judge Bobby Shepherd, and Tenth Circuit Judge Timothy Tymkovich. Their long and exemplary tenures merit our deep gratitude.
Outgoing Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is the king of oversight and the undisputed heavyweight champion of shepherding nominees through the confirmation gauntlet. He has already scheduled two November hearings to handle an expanded slate, and he is taking heat from Democrats for doing it. Grassley has done his part. Now his colleagues must do theirs.
Sen. John Boozman and his fellow Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton have raised questions about Rudofsky, and every senator has the right to do his due diligence. But the calendar leaves no more room for deliberation. Rudofsky is a constitutionalist stalwart, and he has earned swift approval. If this nomination stalls, a left-wing judicial activist could eventually take this crucially important federal appellate seat. Sen. Boozman and his colleagues should move Rudofsky without further delay.
HUGH HEWITT: THE MIDTERMS ARE ONE MONTH OUT — YOU NEED TO KNOW THE STAKES
District courts matter too. The slate is set, and the work that remains is simple. Republican senators must show up for every committee vote, advance this slate out of the Judiciary Committee and confirm every one of these nominees on the Senate floor. The pieces are in place. Get it done, quickly.
Democrats wrote this playbook. In the 2024 lame-duck session, after Republicans had won a Senate majority starting in January 2025, then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Illinois,
ruthlessly rammed through several judges. The votes kept coming until just a few days before Christmas, and Schumer enthusiastically led the way. The left has no standing to complain today when the GOP rightly returns the favor. Given the chance, Schumer would do it all again. Everyone knows it.
Many Republican incumbents leave office in January after years of service to their states. Crucial work remains. These judges will sit for decades and dramatically shape the law.
Senators have a solemn responsibility to confirm these exceptional nominees. A leftist president must not get to stack these seats with radicals. Constitutionalists must hold these lifetime appointments.
The next two years will be bleak for judicial nominees, and bleak in plenty of other ways. The next two months must be bright. Confirming these outstanding judges will be the lasting legacy of these outgoing senators.