Trump needs ever more favorable judges

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pledged last week to cancel the Senate’s traditional August recess. Why? He said that, because Democrats were dragging their feet on confirming President Trump’s judicial nominees, senators would need to stay in Washington.

However, other observers claim that the Senate is moving at a record pace to put new judges on the federal bench — with the result that courts are becoming more conservative and less diverse. Democrats suspect that the president and his Senate allies are fast-tracking nominations in case Republicans lose control of the chamber in the 2018 midterm elections this November.

[...]

As of May 31, 2018, the GOP-led Senate had confirmed 39 of Trump’s judicial nominations, including one Supreme Court justice. This places him second to last compared to the number of confirmed judges at this point in the term for presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan in 1981-82; only Obama comes in behind him.

Where Trump and Senate Republicans stand out is in confirming appellate court judges. The GOP Senate has confirmed 21 of Trump’s nominations for judges to the courts of appeals — far outstripping others presidents’ records at this point in their terms, dating back to Reagan.

Some believe that this focus on the appellate courts is a Trump administration strategy because these courts have a more powerful effect on policy and legal change. The courts of appeals hear all appeals from the federal trial courts and the federal bureaucracy. They hold authority over large regions of the nation. Their cases, like almost all of the U.S. Supreme Court’s cases, deal exclusively with how to interpret federal laws, executive orders, bureaucratic regulations and rules and the Constitution.

Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court hears relatively few cases — roughly 80 each year. That means that the courts of appeals are the courts of last resort for thousands of litigants each year.

  WaPo

I wonder why nobody ever calls right-wing leaning judges "activist judges".