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WASHINGTON — The Democratic-led Senate confirmed the 235th federal judge nominated by President Joe Biden, marking a milestone for the outgoing occupant of the White House by giving him one more than former President Donald Trump secured.
The latest confirmation Friday could be Biden’s last, meaning he will leave office having secured one Supreme Court justice, 45 appeals court judges, 187 district court judges and two judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer heralded the vote as “historic” as the gavel fell to some applause in the Senate chamber.
“The majority has now confirmed more judges under President Biden than any majority has confirmed in decades. This is historic,” he said. “We have confirmed more judges than under the Trump administration, more judges than any administration in this century, more judges than any administration going back decades.”
“The number is very consequential,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a Judiciary Committee member. “We’re very relieved.”
All will serve lifetime appointments, making them the safest part of a Biden legacy that will be partially unraveled by Trump as he returns to the White House and his party seizes control of the Senate next month.
“These men and women have the power to uphold basic rights or to roll them back,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “President Biden is proud of his record of appointments and grateful to the Senate for its partnership in reaching this historic achievement.”
Beyond the number, Biden is proudest of the types of judges he has chosen. The White House highlighted the “professional diversity” of his picks, including “more than 45 public defenders, more than 25 civil rights lawyers, and at least 10 who have represented workers,” as well as judges who have worked on “immigration law, municipal law, and plaintiffs’ side work.”
Biden’s picks have broken from the tradition of presidents of both parties who have leaned toward choosing prosecutors and corporate lawyers to be judges, an early goal for Biden’s White House in selecting nominees.
The White House also highlighted “demographic diversity” including the first Black woman on the Supreme Court — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, herself a former public defender, and a “record number of women, Black, Latino, AANHPI, Native American, Muslim-American, and LGBTQ judges.”
But even though Biden has topped Trump’s number, he is behind his predecessor on judicial record in one key respect: Trump picked three Supreme Court justices, including two who moved the court to the right, creating a 6-3 majority that is seen as the most conservative in nearly a century.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tore into Biden’s slate of judges.
“I found it astonishing that Senate Democrats were willing to rubber-stamp absolute zealots to be judges,” he said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the incoming chair of the Judiciary Committee, said Republicans will ensure Trump ends his second term with a combined total of more judges than Biden had.
“They’re going to brag about having 235 instead of instead of Trump’s 234,” Grassley told NBC News. “On January 20 of 2029, Trump’s going to brag about having 240.”
Given the fewer vacancies Trump and the upcoming GOP-controlled Senate will inherit, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Republicans are highly unlikely to replicate that number in the next four years.
“That’d be pretty impressive to beat,” Cornyn said.
Republicans don’t need to be “in any numerical competition” with Biden’s term; they just need to “be diligent about filling those because those are obviously lifetime appointments,” he said.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said the moment has little significance for Biden and Democrats.
“It means they’ve gotten one more than 234 but one less than 236,” he said in an interview.
Kennedy said he believes Trump might “do things differently” in his second term and “become more involved” with lower court nominees after he largely deferred to others in his first term on district court and appeals court judicial picks.
He recalled that he didn’t like all of Trump’s first-term picks.
“I thought his nominees in his first term were generally good. There were four or five that I helped kill,” Kennedy said. “I talked to him about every time I did it. He always told me, if you have a nominee that’s that I put forward, that is not qualified, knock them into a new zip code. And I did, along with a couple of my colleagues.”
Blumenthal said Democrats’ philosophy was that “every vacancy left open is the potential for an unqualified ideologue” picked by Trump and Republicans next year, who he said “will be there for decades.”
“I’m not ready to uncork the champagne, just because we’ve done some really good work over the last four years. We need to meet be prepared for the worst, hope for the best, and try to defeat nominees who are truly unqualified. We have our work cut out. So the prospects ahead are pretty sobering.”
Sahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
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