Trump’s Record on Appointing Judges Emerges as a Liability One Year Into His Second Term

 HED: Trump’s Record on Appointing Judges Emerges as a Liability One Year Into His Second Term

EXC: The 47th president lags well behind the 46th one in placing jurists on the federal bench.  

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN

January 20, 2026, marked the end of President Trump’s first year in office during his second term. How is he doing with respect to judicial appointments?

On January 20, 2025, when Mr. Trump swore the oath of office for a second time he had 45 federal judicial vacancies to fill. One year later, as of January 20, 2026, there are 47 such vacancies, including a vacant appellate judicial position which lacks a nominee. 

In other words, Mr. Trump  has not managed to keep pace with the rate of new vacancies arising in connection with post-inauguration deaths, retirements, resignations, and judges’ taking senior status. This is not a particularly impressive record as there has been no unusual rush of retirements or resignations.

During this past year, Mr. Trump has managed to secure Senate confirmation for 27 nominees to federal judicial positions. During most of that time, Republicans had a 53 to 47 advantage in the Senate. That confirmation rate — 27 Senate confirmations over the course of his first year — compares favorably with Mr. Trump’s first year in office, 2017-2018. 

During that year, Mr. Trump secured Senate confirmation for only 23 federal judicial nominees. Twenty-seven is an improvement over 23 by some 17 percent. Some improvement ought to be expected, though, given that in Mr. Trump’s last term he  had only 51 or 52 Senate Republicans, whereas he now can count on 53. So too a second term could be expected to convey greater expertise in the byways of confirmation.

How does Mr. Trump’s second term tally of  27 Senate confirmations for federal judicial positions compare against other recent Presidents’ first year in office? President Biden secured 42 Senate judicial confirmations, and President Obama’s second term saw 46 such confirmations — including two judges to the United States Court of International Trade. Although Mr. Obama had a reliable 54 or 55 Senate Democrats, Mr. Biden had only an evenly divided Senate, with Vice President Harris available as a tie breaker. 

To put it bluntly, Mr. Biden’s 42 Senate confirmations for federal judicial positions has outpaced Mr. Trump’s second term tally of 27 Senate confirmations by over 50 percent. Moreover, Mr. Biden, a first term president, secured his 42 Senate judicial confirmations with the thinnest possible Senate “majority.”

Meaning, Mr. Biden had a majority entirely dependent on each and every member of his party caucus, including two independents caucusing with Democrats, and on his vice president. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has a working majority — a senate where Republicans outnumber Democrats by six seats.  

To put it another way: 27/42 amounts to a 64 percent margin. I live abroad now, but when I was in secondary school in the United States, 65 percent was the standard for a passing grade. Additionally, Mr. Trump has nominated or announced prior to nomination a further ten candidates for federal judicial posts. If all of those candidates were to be miraculously confirmed by the Senate today, Mr. Trump’s productivity would still have been outpaced by Mr. Biden’s.

Mr. Trump is rightly focused on the substantive agenda and policies on which he ran for election. Yet one of the primary gatekeepers against his implementing that agenda has been, and remains, the federal judiciary.

Mr. Trump cannot go to the people, particularly during the upcoming November congressional midterm elections, and say he has made every effort to implement his promised agenda — unless he makes use of all the lawful tools at his disposal.

That includes his power to nominate and to appoint — albeit, subject to Senate advice and consent — federal judges. To date, this is not something which the president and his administration have done.

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Seth Barrett Tillman, Associate Professor. Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology, Ireland / Scoil an Dlí agus na Coireolaíochta Ollscoil Mhá Nuad.

Seth Barrett Tillman, Opinion Editorial, ‘Trump’s Record on Appointing Judges Emerges as a Liability One Year Into His Second Term,’ New York Sun (Jan. 21, 2026, 2:11 PM), <https://www.nysun.com/article/trumps-record-on-appointing-judges-emerges-as-a-liability-one-year-into-his-second-term>;  

Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘Trump’s Record on Appointing Judges Emerges as a Liability One Year Into His Second Term,’ New Reform Club (Jan. 21, 2026, 14:34 PM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2026/01/trumps-record-on-appointing-judges.html>;