Absences by Trump’s Senate pals help Democrats confirm Biden judges

Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.

Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes. Conservative activists blasted Republicans’ failure to show up for the votes, prompting a since-deleted, defensive social media post Tuesday by Vice President-elect JD Vance, an Ohio Republican senator who was at Trump’s Florida resort during a significant Monday evening confirmation. The Senate approved Embry Kidd for the 11th Circuit, an appeals court overseeing the southeast where GOP-appointees make up a narrow majority of the judges. The 49-45 vote was essentially party line, with independent Sen. Joe Manchin voting with Republicans against the nomination. Five Republicans – including Vance and Sen. Bill Hagerty, who was also at Mar-a-Lago on Monday as he is being considered for Trump’s Cabinet – were absent, as was Democratic Sen. John Fetterman. Trump earlier this month had urged Senate Republicans not to allow any judicial confirmations in the final weeks of the Biden administration while the upper chamber was under Democratic control. Republicans have made the confirmation process more time-consuming for Democrats by slow-rolling procedural votes, but have not been able to block the nominees outright when members of their caucus weren’t there. Carrie Severino – who leads the Judicial Crisis Network, which advocates for conservative judicial nominees – said in a social media post after Kidd’s confirmation said that it was “critical that Senate Republicans show up to make this more difficult and to try to block these radicals from being confirmed.” Vance, in a post on X that he later deleted, called another critic, Grace Chong, who is CFO of Steve Bannon’s podcast organization, a “mouth breathing imbecile” after she brought attention to his absence. The tweet also revealed that Trump was planning to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray, though FBI directors have traditionally stayed on even when the White House changes party control to avoid the perception of partisan influence.