Anyone who tells ya different is lying to ya….
Among the provocative decisions from Trump-appointed judges:
- A Trump appointee in Arkansas ruled in February that the Voting Rights Act can’t be enforced by private individuals or groups, despite more than five decades of such litigation.
- In May, another Trump appointee in Florida canceled scheduled arguments in a challenge to the federal mandate for mask use in transportation, then rushed out a decision striking down the requirementjust days before it was set to expire.
- Also in May, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas blocked the Biden administration from lifting pandemic-related immigration restrictionsTrump imposed in 2020.
Those envelope-pushing rulings have fueled questions about whether Trump’s judicial picks are more conservative or more partisan than those of previous Republican presidents and whether decades of unorthodox decrees from those judicial picks lie ahead.
In sheer numbers, Trump’s impact on the federal judiciary was profound. During just four years in office, he replaced a third of the Supreme Court, 54 members of the circuit appeals courts and 174 district court judges. In all, about 30 percent of the federal bench.
Trump’s tally of appeals court judges came in just one short of the number former President Barack Obama managed to get on the bench in twice as much time. The 11th Circuit, which is expected to hear the government’s appeal of Cannon’s special master order, is a majority Trump court with six of the 11 active judges appointed by the 45th president.
Trump’s preference for younger nominees also means his judicial picks could be handing down decisions for the next half-century…